


Every Letter That You Write Me

by othellia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Season/Series 03, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-01-20 15:03:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 58,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12435279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/othellia/pseuds/othellia
Summary: In a world where soulmates have the ability to write on each other's skin, Spike finds himself shackled to a five-year-old Buffy who--for once--listens to her mother's advice about not handing out personal information. With no way of tracking the annoyance down, Spike is forced to endure a decade of unavoidable communication.When Spike finally arrives in Sunnydale and discovers his soulmate is none other than the slayer, he revels in the notion of a destined death match, but the Powers That Be have other plans...





	1. Pretty Pretty Princess

**Author's Note:**

> So this is basically my take on a Buffy Soulmate AU. I am addicted to them, so boom. You guys get one.
> 
> I'm planning on this story to be about 24 chapters or so. The first 3 chapters will cover pre-series + Series 2, and everything after that will be Series 3. But like a super-altered Series 3.
> 
> (Also couldn't think of a good title, so that's been ripped from Hamilton.)

**1882**  

Spike woke to feral hissing in his ear and stabbing punctures in his arm. Drusilla was curled next to him under a set of floral blankets. She snarled at his forearm as her nails dug into the skin, drawing blood.

“Dru?” he said, voice still thick with sleep. They’d commandeered the house late last night; its previous occupants were probably still slouched in various states of rigor mortis downstairs. Far above the ceiling, he could feel the sun clawing its way slowly across the sky. It barely affected the others, but he was still a fledge.

Fighting through the exhaustion, Spike squinted through her fingers, baffled at what’d pissed his sire off this high in the day. Then again, this was Dru; she didn’t exactly need a non-baffling reason. As his eyes focused, he made out a small line of writing…

Spike tried to yank his arm from her grasp, but she held fast.

Dru removed one hand and wagged a blood-stained finger in front of his face. “This one’s not for you.”

Spike was too shellshocked to do anything but stare. It couldn’t be… He kept trying to make out the writing—something in French, but it’d been too long since his last class, and Darla handled most of the local communication whenever they travelled the continent—because there was only one reason his skin would be marked like this and he’d never—

“Daddy!” Dru yelled with a wide grin.

Spike tried one last time to free himself from his sire’s grip.

Too soon, Angelus appeared shirtless in the doorway. His mouth curled in disgust as he looked first at Spike, then at the surrounding decor. They’d slaughtered a number of daughters along with the family last night, and Dru had taken the bedroom of the youngest. Lace and dolls smothered every flat surface. Angelus’ look clearly read,  _And you call yourself a man?_  Spike felt his fangs extend in automatic defense.

“Daddy, look!” Dru squealed, oblivious to the tension.

She held up Spike’s arm like an offering.

Angelus’ eyes narrowed… and then widened. A terrible grin darkened his face. “Well, well. An afternoon treat indeed.” He sat down, clasping Spike on the shoulder. “You’re a far luckier man than I.” Then he turned, searching for something. Dru pointed gleefully to the bedside table where a fountain pen rested atop a lavender-covered journal. Angelus uncapped it and wrote a single sentence across his left wrist:

_Spike has a soulmate._

They all waited several seconds for the tight, looping response. 

_Delicious_

Glorified or stripped down, soulmates were a fact of life. Some people had them. Some didn’t. They could be romantic, platonic, or familial. Age gaps were common, with some people reaching their twilight years before their destined one finally wrote back.

It figured Spike’s would only come after he’d already died.

“Here,” Angelus said, passing him the fountain pen.

Spike took it blankly. “What?”

“Can’t leave them waiting.” He grinned boyishly. “It’d be rude.”

“Rude? But I…” Spike tried to suss out Angelus’ intent and any possible traps. The man was the furthest thing from a romantic, frequently whinging about his own connection with Darla, likening her words to a iron yoke around his neck. Spike never understood the complaints; if a godly hand had seen fit to tie him to his dark princess, he’d spend his hours covering her breasts with poetry and then never let it fade— 

“Who is it then?” Darla asked. She’d appeared in the doorway, adjusting her nightgown over her shoulders.

Angelus sighed in irritation. “That’s what dear William here was just getting around to.”

Spike stared at them all in confusion. Dru still hadn’t let go of his arm. She sniffed it.

“Weak, lost little thing,” she cooed. “Dreaming of a knight to save her.” She broke into a smile and laughed. “And a knight she will have to cut off her head.”

“They say it’s the best blood we can ever have,” Angelus said, looping his arm around Spike’s shoulders by way of explanation. “And the most willing. You see… when the words appear upon your skin, you’ll trust anything they say. You’ll do anything they ask. Even walk straight into the mouth of hell.”

Darla smiled, stretching against the doorframe like a lioness. “You were already halfway there, darling. All you needed was the final push.”

Spike looked back at his arm. His head, now mostly awake, finally pieced together a translation of the French words:

_hello, are you there?_

So simple. So naive.

He admitted there was a bemusing irony to Angelus’ plan. The church often extolled the virtues of the sacred mystery of the soulmate. It was personal proof of God’s loving hand, his way of guiding his children through life. To twist that mystery into the devil’s noose…

But at the same time, Spike couldn’t help but feel the exploitation was just a  _tad_  unsporting. He wanted his victims to put up the good fight—lose, yes obviously, but put up a fight nonetheless. There wasn’t anything satisfying about taking down someone who’d already tied themselves to the bloody train tracks.

The pressure increased on Spike’s arm, Drusilla’s claws sinking deeper as a low growl emanated from her throat. The other members of his family looked on expectantly.

Spike let out an unnecessary sigh and began to write.

* * *

  **1927**  

It was Paris in the 20’s and love was in the air—love and beating hearts and foolish youth who, thinking they were invincible, were drawn easily into dark alleyways for nothing more than the hope of quick pleasure. Spike and Dru walked alongside the banks of the Seine, arm in arm and stomachs full, the night theirs.

Spike almost didn’t notice it at first. Beneath a street lamp, the contrast finally caught his eye.

He stopped to stare at his hand. Dru paused as well; as she followed his gaze, her eyes flashed yellow and she hissed. The message written across its back was in English this time, though its meager contents were nearly identical.

“I already killed them,” Spike said blankly, half in confusion, half as an excuse to placate his beloved.

Dru shook her head. “Pesky lights treat life like a carousel,” she spat. “They go and come back, round and round and round…” She tutted over the writing, her nails hovering over his skin. “I want to slice her out of you.”

Spike snapped his hand back.

The passing decades had whittled his and Dru’s age gap into practically nothing. She couldn’t restrain him like she used to.

It wasn’t like he wanted to protect the chit, whoever she was. Soulmate or not, they were a stranger and Spike had never been able to give a rat’s arse about strangers. Which was probably why the greatest blood Angelus promised hadn’t been a death-changing experience, but a mediocre and ultimately unsatisfying kill.

His “soulmate” had been a nine-year-old farmgirl—weak and lost like Dru had foreseen—and when Spike had looked at her, he’d felt… nothing.

Nothing at her torture.

Nothing at her death.

He’d faked the pleasure of course, for Angelus, but there was nothing forcing him to go through the motions a second time.

Careful to keep his wrist out of Drusilla’s grasp, Spike drank in the night air. He drank in the curling scent of the trash filled alleys, the light as it played off the ripples in the Seine, reflecting back into the trees as their branches rustled in the darkness. There was peace here… and chaos, as long as you knew how to tip the balance from one to the other.

Spike snorted.

Angelus’ ideas of fun could be carried out by bloody Angelus. The streets of Paris held ten-thousand more promises than a single soul.

Adjusting his shirt cuff, he pulled Drusilla back against his side with mild resistance. She still didn’t quite accept the fact that he didn’t do things the same way her Daddy did. One day she would though.

One day she would.

* * *

Once a month, Spike’s soulmate rewrote the same question.

He never wrote back.

* * *

  **1986**

Spike’s fist connected with the jaw of the Vahrall demon, sending it stumbling back across the New York alley. Pain lanced deep through his knuckles. He reveled in the pleasure of it. Another night, another dance. It wasn’t even over anything important like money or Dru’s honor this time. He’d just gotten that itch, that clawing urge for bloodlust, and so he’d grabbed a fellow bar patron out by the collar to scratch it.

The Vahrall demon dodged Spike’s next punch, but instead of lunging forward in counter-attack it paused.

“Do you want to get that?” it said, pointing at Spike. At somewhere behind him.

Spike almost snorted. Did Mr. Tentacle Hair really think he was  _that thick_  to fall for the whole point-and-turn trick? God… the trick was so pathetic, he didn’t think it even counted as a trick.

The demon grunted and tapped his hand in clarification.

Spike’s head tilted in confusion. Then he reluctantly looked down at his own hand, just a glance:

 _Hello_  

It was written in a child’s scrawl, curves jagged across the backside of his fist. Spike rolled his eyes and stifled a groan.

Not again.

Spike dropped his hand. “It can wait.”

“Are you sure?” the Vahrall demon said. “Cause I don’t want to get in the middle of—” 

Spike roared, launching himself at his opponent. He’d come out for blood, not a flippin’ tea break. The fight didsn’t last much longer. The demon’s neck snapped, and Spike stood for a moment, soaking up the echoing memory of the crack. Then he shook off his knuckles and re-entered the bar. His opponent’s nearly full mug was still on the counter. Spike grabbed it and poured its contents into his own empty one.

Halfway through the re-filled drink, a lopsided heart appeared beneath the “hello” in what looked like purple gel-pen.

Spike cursed, pulling the sleeve of his duster as far as it’d stretch to cover it. The bar had low light—which, granted, didn’t mean much to a crowd of demons and vampires—so perhaps he’d be lucky for once and it’d go unnoticed.

Thirty seconds later another heart appeared. Then another.

They quickly spread across his hand like a plague.

Spike slammed his beer down, jumping backwards of the stool. It toppled with a clatter and drew the attention of the rest of bar. Covering his left hand with his right, Spike half-stumbled, half-fled the building. Behind him, the bartender shouted for him get back and pay. Spike ignored him—not that he’d been intending to pay even before the appearance marks. 

He took shelter in a neighboring alley.

The hearts were still speckled there. He had to get them off before Dru saw.

He licked his opposite palm and tried scrubbing, tried clawing, but that didn’t work, had never worked—for whatever godforsaken reason, it was ink and ink alone that transferred. He could rip his skin to shreds and the person on the other end would be completely oblivious. Worse, when the skin healed back, the marks would still be there, completely unblemished.

Eventually Spike gave up. The girl would stop doodling when she saw no one responding. He’d just have to wait it out for the night, for the gel-pens to wash away in her next bath.

On the way back to Hell’s Kitchen, he killed a man and ripped his shirt into makeshift bandages. It wouldn’t buy him much time—if any—against Dru’s perceptiveness, but he had to do something. Ready as he was ever gonna be, Spike descended into the basement of the shuttered factory that he, Dru, and several temporary minions had been calling home for the past month. His dark princess was near the entrance, showing off Miss Edith to one of the newer minions. 

“Dru, baby…” Spike said, keeping his hands in the pockets of his duster as she turned towards him. “I’m—”

Drusilla’s face went white and she let out a primeval howl.

Spike should’ve known that she’d know, but her rage was on a completely different level. He stood shocked as she dropped Miss Edith and attacked him. Her claws and fangs tore at his skin and he was forced to hurl her into a stack of oil drums to get her off. She slumped to the ground unconscious. 

He shook off the newly bruised bones, the fresh cuts—they’d heal by morning—and turned to the minion who was staring blank faced at him.

“What?!” Spike demanded.

The minion raised a trembling finger at Spike—no, at his forehead—and then ran.

Christ…

Spike entered their bedroom and tore through his drawer of possessions until he found the polaroid camera. He scowled as he snapped a photo, then snarled, pacing, as he waited for it to develop. It took way too long and he shook the paper more than was probably recommended.

Finally, it cleared.

Pink and purple hearts covered his face. They crawled across his cheeks, ran up his forehead— 

Spike roared and threw the camera across the room where it exploded in a crash of metal parts.

Head spinning with whiskey and rage, he ripped off the makeshift bandages. A fat sharpie lay on the desk. Spike grabbed it and tore into his hand with thick, blocky letters:

_STOP_

He growled at the skin, daring his soulmate to respond. Several hearts smeared away, and then:

_Hi! Wat’s your name?_

Spike groaned. He didn’t have the strength to deal with a sugary bint. Perhaps it was time to do things Angelus’ way again. He used his right hand to write his response beneath the girl’s.  _what’s yours?_

His writing was almost as sloppy as hers, but the faster he could get a name and location, the better.

 _I asked you first,_  she replied.

Spike paused just before he wrote the “s” of “spike.” If he wanted her to trust him, he had to sound normal.

_william. you?_

_Buffy_

Another heart appeared, this one wrapping around both of their names, and it was all Spike could do not to gag. Time to finish this.

 _i live in new york_ , he wrote. _where do you live?_

He waited.

His feet tapped, then devolved into outright pacing.

Ten minutes later, his entire body was wiped clean of the purple marks leaving only his half of their conversation. He blinked at his bare skin, bracing himself for what terrors would follow, but nothing did. Warily, he re-bandaged his hands, then scooped Drusilla out the mess of oil drums and carried her to bed.

* * *

He woke up the next afternoon to a brand new paragraph drooping down his arm:

 _I showd my mom yur name and she got mad. She says I’m not old enuf to tell stranjers my name or were I live even tho your not a stranjer but I promised my mom I woud lissen and it is still good cuz we can still talk about lots of other things!!_  

Her rambling was followed by another lopsided heart.

Spike slumped back into his wall of pillows and groaned.

* * *

In those first days, the only other personal detail Spike managed to uncover was that his soulmate was a right little bitch.

Buffy knew he existed, and she knew what she had to do to make him talk. When he ignored her rambling introduction, the hearts took over again, and unlike him, she apparently felt no shame walking about like a bloody Lisa Frank portfolio. Managing his reputation with his fellow demons was simple enough; if any of them laughed, they quickly found themselves decapitated. Drusilla, though, wouldn’t touch him though if any of the marks were showing… and that hurt.

After a week, the hearts turned to outright sentences.

Spike stood growling at the latest polaroid— _I am a pretty pretty princess_  lay tattooed across his forehead—and his patience snapped.

_what is WRONG with you?_

He waited, sharpie in hand, then:

_Nothing. I am purfect. Wat’s wrong with you?_

Spike buried his face in his free hand; he should’ve never responded. When he looked back, there was new writing.

_How old ar you? I am turning 6 next week_

Spike snorted.

_136_

_Ar you a dragon?_

_yes. a dragon that eats princesses_

To his ever-evolving dismay, the deadly threat only rewarded him with a cascade of glittering smiley faces.


	2. Flamingos and Capitalism

Things got mildly better after that.

Buffy still held all the power in their stalemates—and Spike was forever bitter about that—but at least the little chit’d gotten it through her thick skull that she could get faster, more pleasant responses if she kept all of her writing contained within the patch of skin between his left elbow and wrist. Spike, in turn, began writing with his dominant hand and claimed the right side. He kept both arms wrapped up while in bed, and Dru… well, Dru was still pissed as all hell but, as far as Spike could tell, was slowly coming to terms with the fact that there was nothing she could do about the glittery invader.

Which would’ve been comforting if not for the fact that Spike was equally powerless.

Anytime Spike thought he was making progress, buttering up the chit as he tried his subtlest best to suss out a last name or even a hometown, he got shut down and a random heart drawn across his face for his troubles.

As far as Buffy seemed to be concerned, Spike was nothing more than a captive ear she could ramble to about the animals she’d seen that day, the cartoons she’d watched, the food she’d eaten… meaning she either had no siblings or so many that she got lost in the shuffle. Neither of which helped in narrowing down her identity. Spike  _did_  suspect, from the weather she described and the hours that she wrote, that she lived in California though. A damn good Sherlock he’d made figuring  _that_ out. Narrowed it down to just twenty-seven million people.

Damn good indeed.

As for Spike, the only pleasures he could see were from the occasional tic-tac-toe games he could now play while waiting for the subway.

It wasn’t a very equal trade.

* * *

**1989**

Red neon washed over the damp Kabukicho streets, the light staining Spike’s hand as he brought it up and took another drag of his cigarette. Dru was taking her time with the karaoke attendant on the fourth floor, unsatisfied until she’d drained every last drop. Literally. Normally Spike would’ve helped with the endeavor, but the shop’s ten thousand smiling fish decorations had set his teeth on edge.

Better to wait, let his princess finish when she’d finished.

Outside, humans hurried by in an endless swollen current. Most stole glances at him as they passed. Spike felt himself caught between a grin and a scowl; while he enjoyed the foreign attention, it did make stalking, killing, and disappearing into the crowd afterwards just a tad bit difficult. Violence here was rare, and deaths even rarer.

Still… the city’s electric night-clad atmosphere was worth the danger.

Exhaling smoke, Spike glanced up at the building windows behind him as if he’d actually be able to see in and check Dru’s progress. He loved his princess, but she was taking forever.

After doing a quick mental timezone calculation—8:00am, Californian time—he rolled up his duster’s sleeves and pulled a thin sharpie from his pocket. No new messages on his left arm, so he settled back and drew a hangman’s noose and seven spacer lines on his right. After three years, he and Buffy had moved past the need to ask the other for a game first; they just started playing. Spike waited two minutes for the eventual response:

_Not right now_

Spike scowled at the words. She’d written them in green gel-pen, and was still doing the little circle thing over her ‘i’s that was apparently all the rage among primary school girls these days.

_if you’ve got time to write a complaint, you’ve got time to guess a letter_

When Buffy didn’t respond, he took her ‘not right now’ as a guess, filled in the ‘r’ and ‘o’, and started drawing various stickman parts beneath the noose for the rest.

 _I mean it_ , she wrote. _I’ve got a history test today and I’m screwed_

_so?_

_So, that means unless you’re an expert in the Revolutionary War, I can’t talk to you right now_

Spike stared at his arm.

While he wouldn’t consider himself an expert by any stretch of the imagination, he did remember quite a bit from his years at Eton. Granted he’d learned it all from the British, not Yankee side, but facts were facts. Usually. Plus, Buffy was only in the third grade; he highly doubted her teachers would be drilling her on the socio-economic tensions of the time. That and it wasn’t like he’d cultivated any sort of “image” with Buffy that he was worried about breaking. To her, he was a blank face, completely anonymous. And really, what else was he really doing right now, other than being the resident  _gaijin_  on display while simultaneously boring himself out of his own mind?

Spike picked up his pen.  _and if I am?_

He waited another minute.

 _Ughhhhh, this is not fair,_ Buffy wrote. _Thanks, but I can’t even study anymore, the test’s in 15 minutes, and Mom said if I don’t pass_

Another minute, then:

_You’ll always like me, right?_

Spike was thrown a bit, confused at how Buffy’s question related in any way to her history test—did she think he’d hate her if she was stupid? Also, Spike was quite sure he’d never said he liked her. Tolerated her, yes. Would give her a quick death if he ever met her now instead of a torturous one, yes. But  _like_ …?

_sure. whatever._

~~ _Do you think maybe_ ~~ _I mean I don’t want to, but_ ~~ _I need_ ~~ _I can’t fail this test, and_

She stopped writing.

 _and?,_  Spike prompted.

_Maybe, just this once, and not for all the questions, but d’you think you could help me… cheat?_

Spike stared at her words. His little golden Buffy, a cheater. Who would’ve guessed? He half-debated writing something teasing like,  _“_ oh no, you’re going to hell”, but if his soulmate suddenly wanted to tiptoe for a bit in the darkside, he wasn’t gonna be the one to slam the gates on her—

 _I’m sorry,_  Buffy suddenly wrote.  ~~ _I shouldn’t_~~ _Forget I said anything and_

 _i am 100% at your disposal,_ Spike quickly scrawled.

She paused.

_Really?_

_have I ever lied to you?_

_Yes. Lots of times_

Spike snorted.  _okay, sure. but about anything that’s really mattered?_

They’d nearly filled up their arms, and there was a pause as Buffy erased her side.

 _So…_  she finally wrote.  _If we’re doing this, how are we doing it?_

The spent the next five minutes setting up a system where Buffy would write tiny, single phrase questions on her inner knuckles, and he’d give an equally, tiny response. After a couple successful practices run, Spike fished a small bottle of rubbing alcohol from his pocket and they wiped both their skins cleans. He rolled his sleeves down and waited for her test to start. As his cigarette burned to an end, he stubbed it out beneath his boot, earning him dirty looks from passerbys. He flashed them one back that said if any of them tried to come up and lecture him, he’d show them right where they could piss off.

Finally Buffy’s first question came in:

_USA General - > British?_

Spike grinned. Talk about a cake walk.

Just as he was about to jot down the answer, the building’s elevator opened behind him. Dru’s hands wrapped around his shoulders while her mouth pressed cool against his neck.

“Finished, love?” Spike asked.

He felt her nod. “The machines are still singing in my head,” she cooed. Then she stiffened. Spike knew without looking that she was staring at Buffy’s question, cramped where it was nearly out of sight. Her nails clawed into his leather. “The song’s stuck though. It needs another verse.”

Translation: Dru wanted to hit another karaoke joint.

“But—”

“Leave her,” Dru growled.

Spike frowned. He couldn’t just leave her. Not on the first question. He glanced between the words and Dru’s face, her eyes fringed with yellow.

“Just ten minutes?” he ventured.

Dru jerked back with a growl. She slapped him, nails drawing blood, and stormed off.

“Oh, come on!” he yelled after her. “I just gave  _you_  a full half hour with the bloody karaoke man!”

She didn’t stop.

Spike cursed as he watched her brown hair disappear into the night. He faltered, torn between chasing after her and holding his ground. Beside him, a wood stand advertised prices for a basement ramen shop; Spike kicked it in half.

Whatever. Dru could swan off wherever she wanted. He wasn’t her bitch. And he could help Buffy cheat on her stupid test if he damn well pleased.

As his immediate rage began to clear, movement caught his eye. Down the street, some locals were chatting with the police. They occasionally glanced at him.

That was his cue to scram.

Spike hurriedly scratched  _benedict arnold_  onto his knuckle before skulking off to find someplace more private.

* * *

**1994**

Spike woke up around 5pm. The Aussie sun hadn’t quite set yet, but was near enough to the horizon that trying to grab an extra ten minutes of shut eye didn’t seem worth the effort. He stretched, careful not to disturb Dru, still curled asleep beside him. His now usual black arm wrappings made stark contrast against his pale skin. As he pushed his arms forward, and then up above his head, he froze.

A curl of writing extended past the left wrapping, up and over the back of his hand.

Spike growled softly at the sight. It’d been eight years; Buffy should’ve known the rules by now. If Dru saw any writing past the agreed-upon bounds, she’d go spare, and Spike was  _not_  in the mood to deal with that today.

He brought his hand towards his face to read what’d apparently been so bloody important that it couldn’t—

_—to make out with you, shove my tongue down your throat and feel you all over_

Spike blinked.

Alright then.

The chit never wrote anything that wouldn’t make it past a Disney censor board. Something was definitely wrong in Buffyland.

He pulled down his wrappings only to see the equally steamy beginning of the message trailing down his arm. Spike frowned at it for a moment, then rolled over. He fumbled at the edge of the bed for his duster and grabbed the sharpie from its pocket.

_something wrong, pet?_

He stared and waited, keeping one wary eye on Dru’s still sleeping form. There was no wrapping this back up, not unless he broke out the gloves, which were suspicious on their own, and the only one who could erase anything was—

New writing appeared beneath his question:

_Nothing wrong, only that I’ve just realized you’re a burning hunk of love who I want to wrap my hand around and—_

Spike stared, transfixed, as the message continued on and on, growing progressively dirtier and dirtier. He hadn’t figured Buffy even  _knew_  half these words, let alone… If he was being completely honest, he was half-disturbed, half-impressed by some of the creativity. And her writing didn’t stop. When she ran out of space on his arm, it continued on his stomach—complete with the occasional swoopy arrow pointing towards his crotch.

He could think of only one possible explanation: despite being thirteen, Buffy had somehow gotten completely, utterly, 100% wasted.

Spike let his sharpie hover over his skin, wondering if he should play along and embarrass her for the morning. He didn’t quite know where to begin though, and it wasn’t like was exactly foaming at the bit to start an erotic correspondence with a chit who probably didn’t even know the first thing about buying fancy knickers yet.

There was a sleepy moan beside him.

Shit, Dru.

If she saw even half of this, it’d be the last bloody straw. He’d have to beg for weeks before she laid even a toe on him again. And that’s if he was lucky.

Careful not to shift the mattress, Spike capped his pen and slunk off the bed. He shrugged on his duster and bundled his shirt, jeans, and boots beneath his arm—escape first, get fully dressed later. There was a condemned cannery down by the dock; he’d hunker down there for the night and then wait until Buffy could get sobered up and wash herself off his skin.

* * *

The change was instantaneous.

At 3:16am, Spike sat perched on a pyramid of old crates, looking like a witch who’d sucked a bunch of text out of a moldy grimoire (except replace said grimoire with some godforsaken, five-cent romance). At 3:17am, it was all smearing off his skin in a wash of midnight blues and purples.

Spike put down the dog-earred paperback he’d nicked off a drunk on his way here and grabbed his pen.  _back among the land of the living?_

He waited five minutes for the response.

_That wasn’t me_

And, classic denial.

 _it’s fine, love,_ he wrote. _we all get hammered at some point or other. i won’t judge you if you won’t judge—_

_No! That_ _WASN’T_ _me!!_ ~~ _My friends_ ~~ _My totally USED-TO-BE friends decided it’d be… And when I woke up they laughed and ughhhhh I can’t believe you saw all that_

There was a pause.

 _buffy?,_ he prompted.

 _We had a sleepover and while I was out they…_  She scribbled it out and wrote,  _I’m going to fucking kill them_

Spike lifted an eyebrow. Apparently not all of the vocabulary from last night had been borrowed.

 _consider it forgotten_ , he wrote.  _just… don’t do it again._  He had lucked out this time, waking up before Dru, and he didn’t want to consider what would’ve happened otherwise.

 _Oh_ , she wrote.  _Well, about that…_

Spike stared at her words. _are you_ _kidding_ _me? what happened to “i’m going to fucking kill them?”_

_I can’t just not go to sleepovers! I’d be a_ _freak_ _!_

Spike groaned, rubbing his temples. Middle schoolers.

 _fine,_  he wrote.  _just let me know before so i can… just let me know, okay?_  It’d probably be pointless either way—Dru would see through his excuses to duck out for a night, but at least  _some_  heads up would be better than waking up completely blindsided like he had.

 _…Okay,_ Buffy wrote.  _But just so you know, anything weird like that won’t be from me. So… just ignore_

_wait, so you’re basically saying you get a free card to write whatever you want, whenever you want, and go “just kidding” later?_

_No! That’s not what— You mean you can’t just_ _tell_ _?_

Spike rolled his eyes.  _I’m_ ~~ _a va_~~ _not a mindreader, love_

There was another pause from Buffy’s end. She’d reached the crook of her elbow and began washing her arm off for a clean slate.

Spike took the opportunity to think… and then had an idea.  _i suppose we could set ourselves a safety word._

 _Safety word?_  Her writing appeared near his left wrist again.

_yeah. or rather“words”—one to let me know your skin’s gonna fall out of your control, and then a 2nd to signal it’s you again_

Spike let Buffy ponder the idea—she’d balk if she knew the term’s sordid origins—as he erased the top of his own arm. He didn’t have his little bottle of rubbing alcohol on him, so with only spit it took awhile.

 _Okay, makes sense,_  she eventually wrote. _1_ _st_ _word… What about ‘danger’ or ‘stop’ ?_

_nah, too obvious. gotta be almost nonsense, something only we’d make sense of. also gotta be something we’d never normally write_

_Oh._ Another pause. _Would ‘flamingo’ work?_

_flamingo?_

_IDK, I locked myself in Megan’s bathroom and the towels have flamingos all over them_

Spike snorted.  _flamingo works fine_

Buffy drew a smiley face.  _Okay, you choose the 2nd word. Pick something you see_

Spike looked around the abandoned cannery. His brain scrounged up and immediately tossed out half a dozen words: metal, rust, glass, darkness, grey, black…

 _failed capitalism,_  he finally wrote.

_That’s not one word_

_fine, just “capitalism” then_

_Fine._  She paused again.  _You’re kind of weird, you know_

Spike laughed. He ran his tongue over the gap in his teeth.  _you have no idea_

* * *

**1996**

Five months into her freshman year, Buffy abruptly stopped writing.

Spike told himself that he wasn’t concerned, that her silence was what he’d been dreaming of this whole time. And if he periodically kept checking his left arm for messages, it was only to double-check that she was gone for good.

When she finally  _did_ write back, nearly three weeks later, her words were vague and confusing:

_William, have you ever felt… or, just, have you ever_ _been_ _different? From other people, I mean_

Spike snorted and took another slug of beer, deaf to the chaos of the bar brawl behind him.  _i know high school seems like the beginning of some apocalypse, love, but don’t you worry. it’s not the end of the world._ A howl echoed across the room as an unlucky demon got stabbed in the gut with a pool stick. Spike rolled his eyes.  _trust me._

He waited for one of her usual, petulant retorts.

Nothing came.

* * *

**1997**

“Come on, baby,” Spike pleaded. “Stay with me.”

He and Dru had fled into the crypts of the ancient Gothic church. Dru was shaking, crying; God, she couldn’t even stand with out his support. Deep gashes covered her face and arms. They covered his too. It was a fucking miracle they’d escaped from the mob without getting dusted.

Dru tilted away from him, grasped towards all the skulls lining the walls. “My sisters,” she croaked. “I know the bone horse saved you. Made you beautiful, like he makes everyone beautiful.” She stiffened, suddenly looking at something only she could see. “He’s trotting around us now.”

“The bone horse isn’t here, love,” Spike whispered into her hair. “It’s just you and me. Only you and me. We’re safe now.”

Dru shook her head. “He’s trotting. And where he goes, he goes, clip clop.” Her head lolled back and she giggled at the earthen ceiling. “Clip—”

She suddenly shuddered, eyes fluttering white as she collapsed into a seizure.

Spike cursed. He squeezed his eyes shut, begging himself not to cry. The crypt was damp and hard and she was still shaking as he did his best to lower her ground. Once she was steady, he shrugged off his duster and laid her under her head. As he reached out to brush a strand of dark hair from her waxen, hollow face, he paused.

There was something written on his arm, the first new message from Buffy in more than a year:

_Are you an Angel?_

Spike snarled, rage snapping through him. The  _last_  person he wanted to think about right now was fucking Angelus—the bastard who’d unintentionally given him Dru but had broken her mind in the process. Spike shoved his hand into the duster pocket beside Dru’s head, drew out its resident sharpie, and scrawled,  _HELL_ _FUCKING_ _NO,_  as large as he could.

Then he gave it three underlines for good measure.

Buffy’s question was quickly erased, and she didn’t write back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a warning, next chapter's gonna get a bit dark since, yeah, we're about to hit the events of Season 2 and the return of Angelus. Yay, Angelus. Everybody loves to see him, right?
> 
> Also for reference: [Kabukicho](http://www.japan-tourist-guide.com/lights-of-tokyo.jpg). The locals like to think it's a hive of scum of villainy, but it's really, really not.


	3. The Artist's Canvas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Portions of dialogue in this chapter taken from the episodes School Hard & Becoming Part 2.
> 
> Also as a repeated warning, this fic is going to be a primarily Season Three fic, so take that into consideration as the Season Two months fly by.

**September 1997**

“Buffy!”

Spike froze from his position in the shadows. He’d never cared about knowing a slayer’s name before, hadn’t thought to ask any of the wankers back at the factory, because there hadn’t been any reason  _to_  know, not until—

The Slayer’s blonde hair fanned around her as she spun up into a left kick. She grabbed the stake her friend tossed and instantly dusted the unfortunate minion. She hadn’t broken a sweat.

The rational part of Spike pointed out that there were probably thousands of teenage girls named Buffy in California… okay,  _hundreds_  maybe. Dozens at the very least.

The constantly burning, idiotic part of him immediately rejected that argument. The girl currently standing in the middle of the dark alley, barely flushed with exertion was not  _a_  Buffy, she was  _the_  Buffy.

His soulmate.

She had to be.

Giddiness bubbled out of his throat and into a dark laugh, and he began clapping. The Slayer and her friend turned towards the sound as he stepped out the shadows. “Oh, this is too  _perfect_ ,” he said, a grin spreading over his face. “Nice work, love.”

“Who are you?”

Spike took her in, gaze traveling up and down her petite frame—soft, golden curves that were tempered by the hard glint in her eyes. His tongue curled behind his teeth. Angelus could tear apart as many weak, nine-year-olds as he wanted;  _this_ was more like it.

“You’ll find out on Saturday,” he said.

The Slayer—Buffy—narrowed her eyes, muscles already tensing for another fight. “What happens on Saturday?”

Spike had never been the praying type by any stretch of the imagination, but right now he praised the Powers That Be for having the Slayer’s mum stop him from coming after her sooner. Excitement uncurled itself from deep within his bones.

“I kill you,” he said, drinking in her shock as he easily slipped back into the shadows.

This was going to be the dance of a lifetime.

* * *

Drusilla moaned, clasping both hands over her ears. Each time Spike tried to step in front for her, she rotated away.

“Dru, baby… I don’t understand what’s wrong?” he said, hating the way his voice nearly cracked. “I’m gonna slaughter the bitch. Just like you always wanted.”

His sire only shook her head and seemed to further curl in on herself. Spike ran through what he could’ve possibly said wrong. Nothing presented itself. As he racked his brain, he realized Dru had begun to murmur something:

“—hooks in you. So many hooks and thorns and the sunshine’s scorching the garden to dust.” Her voice rose. “Why does it always turn to dust!?”

She let out a wail and collapsed to the floor.

Spike found himself caught between lending a sympathetic hand and snapping one of her ears off. He couldn’t win. Writing to Buffy was unacceptable. Promising to kill Buffy was unacceptable. What the hell else was a bloke supposed to do?

A presence approached in the hallway.

Spike growled. “Danny!”

The spectacled vampire poked his head into their bedroom. He was probably the least insufferable of the Sunnyhell lot which, granted, wasn’t saying much. “It’s- It’s Dalton,” he corrected.

“Whatever. What day is it?”

“Umm…” He fumbled with a pocket watch. “Twenty minutes to Thursday?”

Spike snarled, and Dalton fled.

The feast of St. Vigeous was still two days away. Did the Anointed Twerp really think he’d be able to twiddle his thumbs that long? Spike carried the still moaning, but unresisting Dru to bed and tucked her in. As he watched her twist and turn, he cupped a hand around the end of a cigarette and lit up.

Time to hustle the plan along.

* * *

**November 1997**

“And the worst part is that before the assassin it was really starting to shape up into a good date—romantic mood, dim lighting, just the two us… And I guess after the assassin we did manage to salvage, like,  _half_  of it. But then there were the other assassins and Spike and Drusilla and it’s like every single time we take a step forward, there’s a giant two by four of awful just waiting to smack—”

Buffy paused. Willow was hunched over the courtyard table, scribbling on her arm. Buffy frowned. “Willow, are you listening?”

Willow’s head shot up, and she winced. “Sorry, it’s just…”

Buffy gave her a half-smile. “Tara, I know.”

“I’m probably the worst best friend ever,” Willow mumbled as she rolled her sleeves down. “Aren’t I?”

Buffy ignored the stinging temptation to jokingly agree.

“Nah, it’s cool,” she replied instead with what she hoped was a casual shrug. “Soulmate stuff is important, and from what you’ve told me about Tara’s home life…  _eesh_.” Buffy shuddered. “If she needs support right now, that’s way more important than boy talk.”

“Maybe…” Willow swept her gaze over the table. “I still feel guilty though. I mean, here I am, practically rubbing her in your and Xander’s faces, going ‘Look at Willow! Isn’t she special?! She has a soulmate and her best friends don’t!’”

Buffy forced a laugh. “Yeah… I guess.”

She ran a thumb over the bare skin of her right arm. Xander and Willow were close enough that she could probably tell them the truth now… of course, if she did, they’d just be hurt and ask why she hadn’t told them sooner.

No one in Sunnydale knew. Well, no one but her mom. It was one of the only things she’d agreed with her old watcher on: a Slayer’s soulmate was a liability. If any vampires discovered she had one, discovered his identity… he’d never be safe again. Sooner or later, William would get killed—or worse, turned—and it’d be all her fault.

Buffy refused to let that happen.

Still, she sometimes wished she’d learned a  _bit_  more about him before she’d cut contact. Their “no personal details” agreement had gone both ways. Buffy knew William was older, maybe uncomfortably older, post-college at the very least, and she knew he’d traveled quite a bit, and… that was it.

And, for his sake, that was all it’d ever be.

Willow was frowning. “If it makes you feel better,” she said. “I’ve only got one of those best friend kind of soulmates, so technically we’re both aboard the same USS Boy Confusion.” She tapped the blunt end of her pen against her arm. “There’s nothing saying that non-soulmates can’t work. I mean, they make romcoms about them all the time, don’t they? All  _‘rah rah, fight the pre-destined power’_  and stuff?”

“I guess.”

“And you said Angel is equally soulmate-less too, right?”

A familiar stab of pain wedged itself between Buffy’s lower ribs. She’d never been a church-going girl, but in those early months of Sunnydale she’d prayed and prayed that Angel had been her long, lost soulmate. That it’d been him watching over her and keeping her company this whole time. After all, ‘Angel’ was hardly his original name, and ‘William’ was pretty old-timey… could possibly fit an old-timey vampire. The handwriting too. Once she’d hit the fourth grade and mentioned learning cursive in her lessons, William’s handwriting had changed from blocky print to elegant script, like something out of some yellowing historical document. She’d teased him about it once, about switching to impress her; he’d sworn it’d simply been a matter a speed, that he could actually write faster like that. Something about not having to pick up the pen tip. Whatever the reason, Buffy could imagine Angel writing like that.

But despite a part of her still wondering, still praying, Angel swore up and down that he didn’t have a soulmate. Then again… Buffy also swore to him that  _she_  didn’t have a soulmate either, so… lies.

Lies were fun.

Of course, there’d also been that  _hell fucking no_  response she’d gotten over the summer. It, more than anything, had kind of put a wet hamper over her naive theories.

“Buffy?” Willow said.

She shrugged. “That’s what he told me…”

“See! So you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

Buffy wasn’t comforted in the slightest but forced a smile anyway. “Thanks, Will.”

Willow beamed back, clearly confident in her ability to do good, and soon returned to her scribbles with Tara. Buffy watched her friend write for a bit, then grabbed her juice box and stared at the distant wall clock—still ten minutes until the end of lunch bell rang. For not the first time, Buffy felt the itch to grab one of her old gel-pens and start up a game of tic-tac-toe.

Buffy shoved the impulse aside and took another slug of juice instead.

Willow was right. She was just being paranoid, overthink-y Buffy again. Sure there weren’t any sparkling ropes of destiny wrapping her and Angel together, but there wasn’t anything keeping them apart either. History was full of famous, loving couples who hadn’t been soulmates. As long as she loved Angel and he loved her, that was all they needed.

Everything would be fine.

* * *

**January 1998**

Spike sulked in his wheelchair. Across the factory, Angelus held Dru as she trembled in his arms, shaking from yet another one of her fits. For all of his grandsire’s earlier, self-indulgent posturing, his glorious comeback with the Judge apparently hadn’t gone quite according to plan; Spike tried not to feel as smug as he did about that.

“Simple setback, Dru,” Angelus said with a confident grin. “Some of these things take time.”

“No time, no time!” Dru said, shaking her head. “Spike doesn’t kill her. Daddy doesn’t kill her. Why does no one  _kill_  her?”

“Shhh…” Angelus said, drawing her closer to him and laying a kiss atop her hair. “She’s nothing compared to you, baby. Her soul’s clingy and her body… well, let’s just say she doesn’t know the first thing about those muscles between her legs.” He moved his face closer to Dru’s, dusting his lips over her cheeks. “Poor Angel was so pent up after a hundred years that anything would’ve gotten him off. I’ve had better lays with corpses.”

Drusilla giggled and let him kiss her. Seconds later the moaning began.

Spike scoffed, rolling his eyes. “ _We’re_  the corpses,” he muttered.

Angelus froze. He turned towards Spike. “What was that?”

Dru hissed, scraping her nails over Angelus’ cheeks and drawing blood. “Ooh, I forgot to tell you,” she murmured against her sire’s ear. Her tongue darted out to trace the shell. “Spike’s been a naughty boy.” Her eyes slid towards Spike, sparkling in vengeful delight, daring him to… something. Spike’s stomach dropped as she tugged Angelus closer and whispered something beneath even vampire hearing.

Spike gripped the wheels of his chair, knuckles turning white. If there was ever a time for the power of mind over body, it was now—his instincts screamed at him to run—but everything below his spine remained inert. Numb.

Then Angelus’ eyes widened, and Spike knew it was too late.

His grandsire looked at him with darkest smile he’d ever known.

“Soulmate of a slayer, then?” he asked; Spike remained silent. “Well… Don’t  _you_ keep moving up in the world?” He shook his head, softly chuckling. “All this time, the bitch played me. Swore she was unattached.”

Spike held his grandsire’s gaze, trying to look nonchalant as he approached. Angelus gripped the back of Spike’s wheelchair as he loomed over him. There was a moment of silence where the two just stared at each other—

A flash of silver appeared in Angelus’ hand, and pain exploded in Spike’s gut. He sucked back a hiss as Angelus twisted the handle of a knife further in.

“Spikey, Spikey…” Angelus said. “When are you going to learn? In this family, we don’t keep secrets.”

“Dun’ know,” Spike bit out through gritted teeth. “Didn’t think it was that important.”

Angelus made another twist and sighed as a grunt of pain inadvertently escaped Spike’s lips. “We also don’t lie.”

The knife ripped out. Angelus retreated to hold it over Drusilla like a bloody dog toy, and—for fuck’s sake—she giggled. Clapping her hands, she snapped at it like some mindless piranha.

Angelus lifted it up out of reach. “How long have they been…?”

Drusilla growled, all previous mirth gone. “Twelve years.”

Angelus lifted an eyebrow and looked at Spike again. It was taking all of Spike’s willpower to stay upright and  _not_  clutch his gut in pain. Bloody freely dripped through his shirt, over his jeans.

“Disgusting…” Angelus muttered. He turned back to Dru. “And the Slayer trusts him?”

Dru gave Spike a heart-broken look. Spike felt his chest tighten. He wanted to plead to her that it wasn’t  _like_  that, had  _never_ been like that. But he wasn’t about to grovel. Not with Angelus watching.

The look told Angelus all he needed to know.

He lowered the blood-coated knife for Drusilla to feast on, and as Spike watched her lap at the cold steel, he suddenly saw Angelus’ plan unfold in all its cold glory. He saw it from the man’s eyes. He saw it from the way he’d waltzed into the factory last night, bragging about the way he’d hurled the Slayer’s post-coital fragility into the mud.

_To kill this girl, you have to love her._

And something about that was fundamentality wrong.

The Slayer wasn’t an ordinary human, a walking bloodbag. She was a work of art. Perfection itself. She wasn’t meant to be torn down piece by piece before getting kicked out like a spent ember. She was meant to explode, flare out in some supernova. Glorious. The brightest she’d ever been.

And if you couldn’t do that, you weren’t worthy of the kill.

Mind made up, Spike moved his right hand over to clutch at his wound as the left went for his pocket. Angelus glanced over but it was only to smirk, thinking Spike’s defenses were breaking already. Keeping his actions hidden, Spike thumbed off the cap of his Sharpie…

He had only seconds, maybe not even that.

Spike whipped his hand from his pocket and went for the first patch of highly-visible skin he could reach, a spot the Slayer wouldn’t be able to miss—assuming she wasn’t currently asleep.  _God_ , he prayed she wasn’t asleep. He scrawled down a barely legible word—

His hand was yanked bank, his wrist caught in a death grip.

“Did I give you  _permission_  to write anything?” Angelus demanded. Behind him, Dru made pouting sounds. “Now… what was so important you’d risk—” He squinted at Spike’s skin, where the safety word was messily written from knuckles to forearm. “Flamingo? Have you gone as barmy as—? Wait, no… Is this some pathetic  _code word_  to get her to… what? Waltz in and rescue you? You two been cavorting this entire time?”

Spike tried not to squeeze his eyes shut as Angelus licked his thumb and smeared off the safety word.

“You’re a hopeless, miserable excuse for a vampire,” Angelus continued. “I get that. But that’s why you’ve got your family here. Family sticks together, course corrects when children have been found… wanting.” He passed the pen back to Spike.

Spike stared at it warily.

“What? Need inspiration?” Angelus said. “And here I thought after twelve years you would’ve teased her into oblivion. But… since the muse seems to be escaping you, how about you start with this?”

Angelus leaned forward and began whispering lewd sentences into Spike’s ear. The words drew inevitable flashbacks to Buffy’s sleepover from all those years ago… or at least they would’ve if the sleepover had been hosted by the Marquis de Sade.

Angelus pulled back and looked at Spike’s still blank skin. “Well? I’m waiting?”

“Why don’t  _you_  write all that since you’re the one with the bloody muse?”

“Oh… I would. But it’ll mean so much more to her coming from your handwriting.”

Spike looked into the soulless brown eyes of his grandsire. He caught another flash of silver—the knife. If he didn’t act soon, it’d be another stab in the gut. And that’d be just the beginning. He didn’t owe his torture to the Slayer. He didn’t owe her anything.

Spike rearranged his grip on the Sharpie and presses it to the skin of his inner right arm.

A single minute. That’s how long his safety word had lasted.

He could only hope it’d been long enough.

* * *

Over the next several months, Spike’s body ceased to be his own.

He lost count of the things he wrote beneath Angelus’ watchful, approving eye. The letters eventually covered his entire body, covered  _her_  entire body—neck, chest, arms, stomach, thighs…

While Angelus had forbidden Spike from mentioning names, most of the details that his grandsire passed along were so intimately personal that the Slayer  _had_  to know who the messages were coming from. Had to know that, whoever her soulmate was, they were here in Sunnydale. Trapped. Caught.

Or maybe that was just Spike’s wishful thinking—even assuming the Slayer had put two and two together, she never attempted a rescue.

And so Spike kept on writing. Some weeks, his only assignment was to maintain the detail. He retraced letters, preserving Angelus’ latest work of art.

He had no idea how she was surviving because she never wrote back.

Not even once.

* * *

**May 1998**

Spike’s legs trembled as he pushed himself out of the wheelchair for what he bloody well hoped was the penultimate time.

He’d been waiting for this moment for months, waiting for Dru and Angelus  _and_  all their minions to vacate the mansion. Now that it’d arrived, Spike was almost re-paralyzed with indecision. He  _could_  confess everything to the Slayer, reveal their connection… but would his soulmate status lend him credibility? Or would she be so disgusted that she’d stake him on the spot?

Probably the latter.

Which meant he’d do this the old-fashioned way.

Spike quickly scrubbed the skin not hidden beneath his duster—he could write something new later, maybe convince Angelus he’d finally grown his own creative bone—and began his prowl of Sunnydale. As long as he wandered long enough, he knew he’d find her.

And he did.

At gunpoint.

Spike sighed and threw himself into action, easily knocking the police officer out onto the hood of his own car. The Slayer gave him two punches and a kick for his trouble.

“Now, you hold a second!” Spike snapped, shoving her away. As the Slayer pulled a stake from her coat, he jumped further back and held up his hands in surrender. “Hey! White flag here. I quit.”

The Slayer glared at him. “Let me clear this up for you,” she spat. “We’re mortal enemies. We don't get time-outs.”

Spike fought back the urge to snarl,  _You don’t know the half of it_. He didn’t care about bloody soulmates right now. Or apocalypses, or destiny, or even the PTB… He just wanted Dru back.

And he  _would_  have Dru back.

“You wanna go a round, pet?” he said. “I’ll have a gay old time of it. You want to stop Angel…? We're gonna have to play this a bit differently.”

Buffy’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

Spike sized her up for the first time. He couldn’t see any writing on her, but that was to be expected; what he’d wiped off him he would’ve wiped off her. She was still gripping her stake, staring bloody murder—which meant the fire was still there, good—but rimming her eyes was a darkness, an all-around pervasive tiredness that he didn’t quite remember being there before.

Spike sighed.

No time to worry about that. Either she’d be capable or she’d not.

“I’m talking about your ex, pet. I’m talking about puttin’ him in the bloody ground.”

Spike casually explained his plan, slowly worming through her defenses and hangups without her even realizing it. Or at least he thought he’d been, right up until the point where she decked him in the face again. As he rubbed his jaw, doubt creeped in for the first time.

“I hate you,” she said, voice deathly cold.

“And I’m all you’ve got,” he shot back. His fingers skimmed towards his duster pocket; perhaps words weren’t enough and he’d have to reveal their connection after all—

The police officer began to stir on the hood of the car. They both turned. Buffy seemed to deflate.

“All right,” she said. “Talk.”

One near miscommunication later, Spike found himself tramping off shoulder to shoulder with the Slayer. He kept his hands in his pockets, thoughts focused on the plan. Still, at every street crossing, he risked a sideways glance—Buffy’s mouth was set in a grim line and the haunted look hadn’t left her eyes one bit. His fingers found the Sharpie in his left pocket, edged around the rim of its cap… every so often, his fingernail caught, playing with the temptation to pop it off, write something comforting…

Spike kept the pen closed and kept walking.


	4. Lovers Stumble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Portions of dialogue in this chapter taken from the episode Lovers Walk.)

**July 1998**

Buffy dragged herself into her cramped LA studio, limbs heavy after her double shift at the diner. She resisted the urge to tear off her checkered uniform in one quick go—she didn’t have the money or the excuses lined up to ask management for another—and began the long process of unbuttoning instead. Her fingers slipped several times, slayer dexterity forgotten.

On the third button she froze.

There was something new written on her arm. It was the first mark in months. The first since…

Buffy’s chest seized and she fought to breathe. She couldn’t go through this again, couldn’t—

She turned her head, letting her eyes focus on the cracked ceiling until she was able to calm down, and then forced herself to look at it.

_i hate you_

Short. Simple.

Buffy numbly ran her fingertips over the words, over the blank space around them.

After the battle of Acathla, her skin had been wiped clean. She’d tried several times to reach her soulmate—once at the mansion, again at the Sunnydale bus terminal, a final time when she’d reached LA—but had gotten nothing in response. By now, after two months of silence, she’d assumed Angelus had simply killed William before her attack on the mansion. Or worse, Angel had lied just like  _she_  had lied, and he’d been her soulmate the entire time.

All at once, she remembered the pain, frozen in Angel’s eyes, as she’d stabbed him.

Buffy shook the image out of her head. She stumbled over to her bedside drawer and scrounged for a pen. Her fingers closed around one of the ones she’d lifted from the diner. It was a cheap ballpoint and the tip dragged at her skin, but it was something.

_William?_

~~ _obviously, who else_ ~~ _oh, right, capitalism and all that rot_

The second safe word.

How many nights had she doubted herself, doubted whether she’d actually seen the first one or not? Whether it’d been some trick of the light as she’d pulled her pajamas on for bed? Some trick of her own naive head?

Buffy’s thin relief at William’s safety vanished as the meaning of his earlier words suddenly sank in.

He hated her.

Of course he did. She’d suspected— No, she’d  _known_  it was Angelus’ words behind the writing, and she hadn’t launched a single rescue attempt. For the first time that summer, her numbness cracked and tears threatened to spill.

 _I’m sorry_ , she wrote.

William didn’t respond, her generic apology obviously not enough.

 _I was trying to protect you._ _I ~~thought Angelus~~_  Buffy shut her eyes. She’d lasted two days—two full days of long sleeved outfits and fashionable gloves and thick foundation—before she’d broken down in front of Giles for help.  ~~ _My Watcher_~~ _Someone I trusted said that Angelus would do something worse if I tried to rescue you. Worse than what he was doing already._

_right_

As Buffy slumped onto the bed, its metal springs creaking beneath her. She stared at her arm, lost for words. All she had were excuses, excuses that’d admittedly made sense at the time (she didn’t know what William even looked like; didn’t know if Angelus was keeping him in the factory or somewhere else entirely; had the pain in Giles’ eyes after Miss Calendar’s death to remind her there that was  _always_  a worse), but they all seemed totally pathetic now.

She tried to imagine William’s capture. Had he been in Sunnydale, or had Angelus gone out of his way to torment her, tracking down and abducting him from somewhere else? Perhaps in some little alleyway just past sunset? Had it just been Angelus, or had he gathered an entire crowd? And William…

Buffy frowned.

She realized she couldn’t imagine that part because, right… amazing soulmate that she was, she didn’t know what he looked like. Was he tall or short? Fat or thin? She really only knew one William in her life and, technically, he wasn’t even a ‘William.’

For a split second Buffy pictured  _that_  so-totally-not William as her William, all white hair and black leather…

She shuddered.

No, thank you.

Thankfully, she was quickly re-distracted by the new text writing itself over her arm:

_did you at least kill the bastard?_

Buffy stared at the question. She didn’t have an answer for it,  _couldn’t_ answer it, because if she did, she finally made it real. With shaking hands, Buffy capped her pen, turned off the lights, and crawled into bed.

It took her a long time to fall asleep.

* * *

**November 1998**

Spike stumbled, his hand thankfully gripping the magic shop’s bookcase before he went tumbling to the floor. He hadn’t been sober for months now…

It was all the Slayer’s fault. He’d finally come back to Sunnydale only to find out that, on top of everything else, she hadn’t even killed Angelus. Bloody Angelus, who he’d practically gift-wrapped on a platter for her. What did she do instead? Scribbled out a single  _‘I’m sorry’_  that she probably hadn’t even meant, but that was okay because she was perfect Buffy, the golden-hearted chosen one, which meant that she got bloody everything while he was left grasping at crumbs and it wasn’t  _fair_  and now even the bloody shopkeeper wouldn’t give him—

Spike tilted his head. Through his drunken haze, he realized the girl that the shopkeeper had left him for—the girl she was still talking to—was the Slayer’s redheaded friend. Willow.

Wait… Willow was a witch now?

“A soulmate spell?” the shopkeeper asked, reviewing what Spike could only guess was a list of ingredients. He felt himself take a step closer.

“Yep,” Willow replied. “Ethling’s Summoning. Figured we’ve been writing for a decade now, it’d be nice to finally see each other face to face and, you know,  _talk_. Oh! Do you know if I can just use the mirror in my bedroom, or do I have to get a special one?”

“Any mirror should work fine,” the shopkeeper cheerfully replied. She held up the list. “I’ll get you what you need.”

Spike stared at the two of them—Willow swaying back and forth in anticipation, hands locked behind her back; the shopkeeper dutifully picking out ingredients from the shelves. Spike hadn’t even known there were spells that affected soulmates, but now that he did…

Willow left with her purchases, store bell chiming on her way out. With no other customers, the shopkeeper re-approached Spike with her blithe, manufactured smile.

“So did you find a spell book?” she asked.

“Forget the book,” he said, tearing into her throat before she could scream. Wasn’t even particularly hungry; just doing the world a service by removing her from it. He drained her, then let the body drop. “I just got a better idea.”

* * *

Spike dumped a box of old magic supplies onto the bed next to the fidgeting witch.

“A spell. For me. You're gonna do a spell for me.”

Willow stared at him with terrified eyes. Normally the fear would’ve thrilled him, stroked his ego; right now it only bumped his irritation up a notch higher.

“Umm… what kind of a spell?”

“One that’ll get rid of a soulmate.”

In a single blink, the terror diluted itself with confusion. “Wait, what? You mean, you—? So vampires  _can_  have soulmates? Even without souls?”

“Not going to have it for long,” Spike muttered. “Can you do it? Break the connection?”

Willow fidgeted again. “Well… I mean, soulmates are  _soulmates_. They’re pretty darn complicated and even if there was a spell to break that, I’m not sure that I’d be able— eep!” She flinched beneath Spike’s lunge and sudden growl. “I can probably take care of the skin writing part though! Block that from happening. Make it like the connection doesn’t exist.”

“Probably?” Spike demanded.

“Totally!” she squeaked. “I meant ‘totally!’”

“That’s right…” he said, reluctantly backing off. He was getting results tonight. Either that or a fresh body and the Slayer’s eternal hate. Or both.

Both was good.

Spike waited as the witch poked through his box.

“So…” she finally said, grimacing at a rotting jar of belladonna-seasoned frog legs. “Why do you want to get rid of Drusilla anyway? Buffy told me that your guys’ whole Acathla team up was for—”

Spike snarled. His face shifted as he pressed his fangs against her throat, daring her to continue. “ _Don’t_  say the name.”

“Drusilla?” Willow whispered.

“No, the other one.”

“Buff—?” At his second snarl, she went quiet.

Spike clung to the nostalgic flash of anger for as long as he could. It quickly flowed away, leaving only numb despair, and he collapsed onto the bed next to Willow.

“She wouldn't even kill me,” he moaned. His head knocked against the bedpost, limp and pathetic. “She just left. She didn't even care enough to cut off my head or set me on fire.” He felt himself sniff and couldn’t even muster enough demonic shame to feel embarrassed. “I mean, is that too much to ask? You figured if I’d pissed her off  _that_  much, she’d at least’ve shown a  _little_  sign that she cared?”

He paused and took a deep breath in and out. Just because he could.

“Shoulda never made that stupid truce with Buffy,” he muttered at the floor. “Always had Dru paranoid that did, sod all my thousand promises that it was just words between us, that it’d  _always_  been just words. Sod the fact that—”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Willow said. “Are you— Are you trying to tell me that Buffy and you…?”

Spike stared at the witch. A cold feeling pressed in around his booze-laden haze as he realized what he’d just confessed.

Not that it mattered.

Why did he care whether or not the Slayer’s friend knew? He’d been planning on draining her after she did his spell; it didn’t matter what forbidden bits of knowledge she crammed in her brain between now and then.

Willow’s surprise drooped into a frown. “Wait… You’re lying. Buffy doesn’t even have a soulmate.”

Spike scoffed at her, incredulous. “Buff— The Slayer doesn’t have a soulmate? Where do you think all those delicious words were coming from last spring?”

“What words?”

Spike stared at Willow. She blankly stared back.

He groaned, wishing he hadn’t already sloshed his way through his personal hoard of Jack Daniels. This entire night was sinking into a sea of pure  _mental_  faster than the Lusitania.

“Look, I have no idea what Miss Golden Perfect of yours decided to share and what she decided to hide from her supposed friends,” he spat. “Frankly I don’t care. I just need you to do the bloody spell and get her  _out_  of my bloody skin.” He shoved the supply box closer to her. “Can you do it or not?”

Keeping a wary eye on him, Willow combed through its contents again. “This isn't enough,” she finally said.

“What?”

“Well, there are other ingredients, a-and… a book. I need a spell book. This isn't it.”

“You've got one, though, at home?”

Willow shook her head. “Not at home. I left it somewhere.”

Spike gave her a look that could’ve killed death.

“Where?”

* * *

“Hello, Joyce.”

The Slayer’s mum turned from her position by the phone. “Oh.” Her heartbeat gave a little jump and then her mouth widened in recognition. “It was… Spike, was it?”

“Yeah…”

Spike remained by the kitchen door as Joyce kept the phone pressed against her chest. Then she blinked and lifted it back to her ear.

“Buffy? Are you still there?” She frowned. “Buffy?” After a couple more seconds of waiting, she hung up. She turned back to Spike with a resigned sigh. “Did you need anything?”

As Joyce stared at him, a concerned pout began to mar her aged yet attractive features. She was worried. For him. The woman who’d basically caused this whole mess—Spike suddenly realized—all because she’d stopped the five-year-old bit from giving up her personal details. Spike had praised her for that decision last year. Now he realized just how much of a curse it’d truly been.

Spike saw himself lunging towards her, closing the gap, sinking his fangs into her unblemished throat, clawing through her chest, ripping out her heart in exchange for the heart she’d—

The blood lust hit too fast, too hard.

Spike staggered back against the wall, clutching his spinning head.

“Oh no!” Joyce said. “Are you okay?” She rushed forward and placed a palm against his forehead, oblivious to the danger. “I’m not sure how to help, but…”

It was all too much. She shouldn’t be caring. He didn’t want her to care. He wanted Dru. He wanted—

Spike collapsed to the kitchen floor and began sobbing. He lifted his arms, trying to hide his face in the crook of his elbows.

“Is it anything you need to talk about?” she asked softly.

Spike shook his head even as he heard himself say: “S’all her fault…”

Joyce stepped back.

“I’m going to make some hot chocolate,” she announced calmly. “Feel free to drink and talk. Or just drink. Or nothing at all. Whatever you need.”

Spike watched silently from the kitchen floor as the Slayer’s mum put a kettle on the stove before rummaging through various cabinets. She stirred various ingredients into two mugs before bringing them to the island in the center of the kitchen. Spike slowly dragged himself off the floor and took a seat on one of its stools. It’d be a waste to pass up the drink now that it was being made. That was all.

“So…” Joyce ventured, remaining by the stove to keep one eye on the kettle. “Is Spike a family name? Because it’s certainly very… unique.”

Spike paused. He hesitantly edged his thumbs around the rim of the blue mug. “It’s William.”

Joyce smiled. “William,” she repeated, shoulders loosening.

Spike wanted to snort—woman probably would’ve relaxed if Lucifer himself was here, saying his name was ‘Bob’—but like almost everything else tonight, he couldn’t seem to find the strength. He stared into the depths of his powder-filled cup instead.

“Don’t know why I came here…” he muttered. “S’was stupid.”

“No…” Joyce instantly protested.

Spike did laugh at that. Knew absolutely nothing about the situation, but was so quick to come to his defense. The complete opposite of his Dru.

“I would’ve given her anything,” he said, cradling the fragile cup between his hands. “I  _did_ give her everything.” So fragile… so dark and porcelain… Something cracked inside him. “I mean, yeah, so I’ve got the occasional words on my wrist. Doesn’t mean anything, you know? And I  _told_  her it didn’t mean anything, but did she believe me?”

“You have a soulmate?” Joyce asked.

Spike stiffened. Great. He’d gone and put his foot in it again. The last thing he needed was another Red running around and blabbing her mouth, but it wasn’t like he could step back and lie about it now.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “You gotta problem with that?”

“No, just…” Joyce frowned. “Buffy still doesn’t really tell me much about… well, what she does, so I end up having to make guesses. Demons, vampires, magic… I don’t know what’s fact and what’s fiction anymore.”

The kettle whistled and Joyce took it off the burner.

“Just so you know,” Spike said, leaning back so she could pour the boiling water into his mug. “Your daughter’s not exactly the declarative expert on vamp matters she thinks she is.”

He stared at his hot chocolate for a moment before taking a cautious sip—for instant, it wasn’t half bad. Joyce sat beside him, hands cradling her own mug, clearly expecting him to continue. Spike considered the risks of talking about Buffy, even indirectly…

Whatever. As long as he kept the details out this time, he’d be fine.

“But as I was saying, the words, they didn’t mean  _anything_. What Dru and I had, it was love. True love.  _Eternal_ love. You really think I’d throw that away for some pint-sized chit that… that…”—he sloppily twirled a hand at the ceiling—“whoever up there decided it’d be fun to bind me to for a lark?” Spike snorted. “No thank you.”

“I can understand that.”

A low growl escaped Spike’s throat. “No, you can’t.”

“Maybe not,” Joyce said, seemingly oblivious. “But Buffy’s father had someone else for a soulmate. During our marriage, we had lots of disagreements, and it was always easy for me to throw the blame on that. But the real reason we fell through in the end—the real  _reasons_ , they were… much more complicated.” She took a sip from her cup.

Spike stared at her, then snorted and shook his head.

Maybe she  _did_ know then.

“I always made sure to cover it up,” Spike finally said, not sure whether he was rambling to himself or to Joyce anymore. “Wrapped my arms in bed and everything. Never wrote in Dru’s presence, well,  _almost_  never in her presence. Sometimes she’d sneak up on me, and there’s nothing I could do about  _that_ , you know? And I thought that’d be enough, cause it was shaky sometimes… but it worked.” Spike felt tears prickle as he remembered the horror and pain and rage in Dru’s eyes when she’d finally woken up in the DeSoto, twenty miles past the borders of Sunnydale. He’d clung to her the entire summer and that horror had never gone away. Probably never would. Spike forced a bubbling sob back down his throat, cast his gaze at the ceiling. “But then I made that bloody stupid truce and that was the last straw, apparently. She said I betrayed her. Said I betrayed family. Wouldn’t believe a single word that came out of my mouth after that.”

“Truce?” Joyce repeated. “That was when Buffy and you…?” She gestured back towards the living room.

Spike nodded. “And you know, first, she just gave me the silent treatment which is, yeah, bad but whatever. Figured I’d survive, keep apologizing, wait it out. Done it before. But then all of sudden one night I'm strolling through the park, looking for a meal, and I happen to walk by, and she's making out with the chaos demon! And so I said, ‘You know, I don't have to put up with this.’ And she said, ‘Fine!’ So I said, ‘Fine, do whatever you like!’ I mean, I thought we were going to make up, you know?”

“Well, she sounds very unreasonable.”

Spike open his mouth, then paused. He felt like she should defend her, but even his defensive punches had been taken out of him. He looked his cup of hot chocolate—plain, empty, alone… He turned to Joyce. “You got… any of those little marshmallows?”

She nodded, then went to fetch them.

When she came back, Spike coated the entire surface of his chocolate with them. He poked at one with a black-chipped fingernail.

“You know, I even stopped writing for her. It’d been two… nearly three years since I wrote anything—well, anything voluntarily—but did that mean anything to her either? No!”

Joyce frowned. “You stopped writing? Was it a mutual decision with…?”

“With? Oh, you mean with my soulmate? Yeah,” Spike said automatically. Then he paused. It wasn’t like Joyce  _needed_  to hear the full truth of it… but if he was spilling the rest of his heart out tonight, he might as well. “Alright. Truth is… she’d already stopped writing me. Soulmate, not Dru. So I admit, not entirely the grand sacrifice I just pumped it up to be, but same results. I’d stopped writing. She had nothing to complain about. And even before I stopped, it was nothing.” He held up his left arm like he could see through the leather. “Just games of bloody hangman and tic-tac-toe and whatnot.” He snorted. “Real relationship threatening  _those_  were.”

Shaking his head, Spike dropped his arm and took another sip of his marshmallow-coated chocolate. He waited for Joyce to say something.

She didn’t.

Spike turned. Joyce was staring at him.

“What?” Spike demanded.

Joyce’s lips parted. She continued staring as if she was seeing him fully for the first time. “William…?” she said slowly, as though she was testing to the name.

Spike’s stomach dropped.

She knew.

His hands trembled. He tried to brush off her suspicions with an unrelated, sarcastic quip, but nothing was coming to mind.

A loud magical twang echoed through the kitchen, followed by a thud.

Spike’s head whipped towards the back door. Joyce stumbled out of her seat as Angelus himself pressed his hands against the open doorway.

“Spike,” he growled.

“Oh my God,” Joyce breathed. She stared down the brown-haired vampire. “Get out of here!”

Great… just what he needed.

Spike sidled up behind Joyce. “Yeah. You’re not invited.”

He took his time taunting his grandsire. He had no idea what the berk was doing here, but he was determined to have at least one spot fun in this otherwise hellish night.

“You touch her,” Angelus snarled as Spike mimed biting into Joyce’s neck, “and I'll cut your head off!”

“Yeah? You and what army?”

“That would be me.”

Spike barely had time to mentally place voice and memory together before he was knocked back onto the kitchen island. The Slayer loomed over him, pinning by the throat. Fury blazed in her eyes.

“Angel,” she said tightly. “Why don't you come on in?”

Spike sensed rather than saw Angelus—no, Angel—step through the door. Behind the Slayer, Joyce made small yelps of panic as she retreated across the kitchen.

“You shouldn't have come back, Spike.”

“I do what I please.”

“Buffy, what’s going on?”

Spike tried to grab at the Slayer’s arm, but Angel lunged forward and pinned it to the island with the rest of him. The Slayer yanked a wooden stirring spoon out of nearby utensil cup and lifted it over his heart.

Death—a second death—flashed before him.

“Buffy, stop!” Joyce grabbed the spoon with both hands before her daughter could slam it down.

The Slayer looked at her mother in disbelief. “Stay out of this, Mom!”

“No!”

“You have no idea what’s going on!”

“You’re right, I don’t! And that’s all the more reason to sit down and talk this out like adults.” Joyce tried to pull the spoon out of the Slayer’s hand to no success. She glared at her daughter. “I’m not going to watch you be a killer.”

The Slayer gaped at her, then nodded sideways at Spike. “ _He’s_  the killer. He was going to kill you!”

“William and I were having a peaceful discussion.” Joyce pointing a shaking finger towards Angel. “He’s the one who was trying to kill us. And isn’t he the one who was stalking you? Who tried to get into our house? Who wrote all those terrible things on…” She glanced down at Spike who gave her a panicked look. “…you know who?”

The Slayer sighed. “That was Angelus. This is Angel.”

“I don’t—”

“He’s good again. He has his soul back.”

“Soul?”

“Yes, soul. Normal vampires don’t have them. Hence the evil and the bitey.” She thew a glare at Spike and tightened her grip around his throat—as thought that’d actually do anything to a creature that didn’t need to breathe.

“Wait,” Joyce said, blinking. “They don’t have souls? But then how…?”

The Slayer groaned. “We’ve been over this before. The person inside gets replaced by a demon. Soulless demon.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Ask Spike what he’s doing here,” Angel growled.

The Slayer looked at her boy toy. She raised an eyebrow as she returned her attention to Spike. “What he said. Or you’re about to get really familiar with Mr. Pointy’s little sibling here.”

Joyce coughed.

“Not while I’m making threats, Mom.”

Spike rolled his eyes. The entire situation was beginning to lack in dramatic tension.

“Willow,” he finally said.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve got your friend. She’s gonna work a little magic for me, and—” The wooden spoon made a sudden downwards arc despite Joyce’s shared grip. “Do me now and you’ll never find her!” Spike spat out.

The Slayer paused, glaring at him.

Spike licked his lips. “Soon as she does my spell, I let her go. Promise.”

Angel growled. “Don’t listen to him. You can’t trust a word he says.”

The Slayer glared down at Spike. He glared back. The incandescent kitchen light caught on the edge of her honey-colored hair, illuminating her like some sort of vengeful angel… and not the mopey, brooding kind. Slowly the anger in her eyes began to cool. She let up on Spike’s throat and he pushed himself back to his feet. Joyce finally let go of the spoon. The Slayer kept it clutched tight.

“If you do a single thing to double-cross me…” she warned.

Spike held up his hands in mock surrender. “Gentleman’s honor.”

The Slayer looked him up and down before snorting in disgust. “Says the man who wouldn’t know the first thing about it.”

Spike dropped them back to his sides. “Whatever. I’m gonna get what I came here for. You and your great poof here wanna tag along? That's fine. But you get in my way, and  _you_  kill your friend.”

Spike pushed his way out of the kitchen; the witch had said she’d left her spell books by the end of the couch closest the telly. Behind him, he heard Joyce’s voice:

“Buffy, I really think we should talk…”

“Not  _now_ , Mom.”

Spike tensed. With the bombshell he’d accidentally dropped, Joyce’s planned “talk” could only mean one thing. A broken laugh threatened to escaped him—first the best friend, then the mum… Spike wouldn’t have been surprised if, by sunrise, his secrets hadn’t spilled their way over the front page of the bloody Sunnydale Times. He needed to finish this thing already and get the hell out of Dodge.

He found the stack of spell books and went through them until he found the one Red had described:  _Magicks of the Heart_. It practically a gothic, leather-bound Harlequin novel.

A presence prickled behind him.

Angel and the Slayer were standing together at the entrance of the room, arms crossed and glaring. Grandsire and soulmate. Wanker and bint. Upright stick-in-the-muds… Screw what the Powers said, the two were more than bloody welcome to have each other.

Spike slipped  _Magicks of the Heart_  into his duster before either of them could see the title.

One way or another, by the end of the night, he was gonna be a free man again.


	5. Lovers Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Portions of dialogue in this chapter taken from the episode Lovers Walk.

The holy water exploded over the attacking vampires. They screamed and hissed as their flesh steamed, then fled through the broken store front. Spike picked himself up and watched them run. Bloodlust coursed through him, burning against the alcohol and making everything sharp and fuzzy at the same time.

“Now, that was fun.”

He turned toward the Slayer and Angel with a triumphant grin. The two stared blankly back at him.

“Oh, don’t  _tell_  me that wasn't fun. God! It's been so long since I had a decent spot of violence.” He stretched for a moment, duster tugging down his wrists, and then stopped. His gaze lingered over his right arm. “Really puts things in perspective.”

Angel groaned in pain—his earlier trampling had apparently left some bruised bones around his mid-section. Or broken. Broken was even better. The Slayer hurried his side, running a gentle hand over his shoulders.

Spike nearly groaned himself at the disgustingly sappy display.

“You two are really the worse, you know that?”

The Slayer scowled at him. “Could we just do the damn spell now?”

Right. The spell.

The spell that would supposedly cut their mystical link. Well… wouldn’t even cut it really according to Red’s stipulations. Just cover it up. Which was nothing different from what he’d already been doing, so why had he shoved all his hopes into it? The spell wouldn’t make Drusilla love him again. Just drag his pathetic corpse deeper into the mud.

Clarity hit like thunder in a summer storm.

“Sod the spell,” Spike said. “I'm gonna do what I shoulda done in the first place.”

He cracked his knuckles as he sized up the slayer. The air crackled with adrenaline. There was a bounce in his feet. This was it. One-on-one death match of destiny. He was making it happen tonight.

Right here.

Right now.

Unfortunately the Slayer didn’t seem to be latching onto the non-verbal battle signals he was throwing out.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, still clinging to Angel.

“Leave the berk and fight me.”

“No.”

She tightened her grip on Angel whose eyes were now flickering between brown and yellow. “Don’t worry, Buffy,” he muttered. “We’ll take care of him together.”

“ _You_  stay out of it!” Spike snapped. “This is between me and the Slayer.”

“This?” Buffy said in disbelief. “What ‘ _this_ ’, Spike? There is no ‘ _this_.’ ”

Spike growled. He stepped towards the Slayer, reaching to shove Angel off, to get him and her  _alone_ , but she moved to counter him.

A sudden chuckle echoed through the magic shop. Angelus’ chuckle.

Spike’s blood ran ice cold for a moment. Could it be—? No… The vampire clutching onto the Slayer’s shoulder was still Angel. He regarded Spike with a wry smile.

“She might be the one and only Slayer to you,” Angel said. “But you’ll always be just another vampire to her.” Angel’s eyes swept over Spike. Over his skin. “Always.”

Spike inhaled sharply through his nose. His teeth ground together with an almost painful friction. His fists tightened, claws pressing against skin and drawing blood. He should’ve known his grandsire would insist on buggering things right up until the very end—

No.

That was it.

Spike’d had enough of playing by the rules. He was getting his one-on-one death match tonight even if he had to throw down all his hidden cards to do so.

He fumbled in his pocket for his Sharpie. The mum and the witch already knew, were probably gonna kiss and tell as soon as the Slayer saw them next anyway. They’d warn her against ever writing to the big, bad vamp ever again. He pulled the pen cap off with his teeth and spat it out; he didn’t worry about having to find and pick it up. One way or another, he wouldn’t be doing any more writing after tonight.

Angel tensed. “We should go, Buffy,” he said. “Forget him.”

“What? We can’t go. He has Willow.”

Spike finished writing  _FIGHT ME_  on his palm and faced it towards the Slayer.

She ignored Angel’s tugs towards the back door and stared at Spike like he’d gone mental. “What the hell are you doing? I already  _know_  you want to—”

Spike nodded at her own hand and her eyes dropped.

She held her palm out in front of her, eyes widening at the matching text as the blood slowly drained from her face. Her limbs began to shake.

Spike frowned.

Well,  _that_ wasn’t the reaction he’d been hoping for. The Slayer was supposed to have leapt forward, consumed with white hat fury as she tried to stake her vampire soulmate out of sheer principal alone.

Hopefully it was just temporary shock. That, at least, was easy enough to fix.

Spike strode forward, but instantly found himself pushed back by Angel. The older vampire had a stake out, was pushing it against Spike’s chest. Damn. He must’ve been faking the last several injured moans.

“Say the word, Buffy,” Angel snarled, eyes not lifting from Spike’s. “And I’ll do it.”

Spike tried to wriggle loose, but Angel pressed the stake further in. The wooden point tore through Spike’s thin cotton shirt, nicking his skin, and he froze again. He squeezed his eyes shut, preparing himself for the Slayer to utter that final, fatal ‘yes’—

“No,” she said. Both vampires whipped their heads towards her. “That is… Not just yet… I- I need time to think.”

She staggered, a hand cupped over her mouth. Angel dropped Spike to help her.

Spike should’ve ran then. Bunkered down in another abandoned factory. Mentally re-grouped. Fled Sunnydale altogether.

If he’d been smart, he would’ve run.

Spike had never been smart.

The Slayer recovered moments later. Her eyes met his for a split-second—Spike couldn’t read the emotions that flickered behind them—and then she lunged. She pinned the upper half of Spike’s to the floor while Angel tackled his legs before he could kick himself free. Her grip was like steel; Spike growled and bucked up ineffectually against it. The next thing he knew, her fist connected with his jaw and he was out cold.

* * *

Buffy grabbed the heavy chains from Angel. She had no idea where he’d gone and gotten them—he’d told her he’d meet her back at the house before disappearing—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Plus, blah blah, something about not looking gift horses in the mouth.

Her hands shook as she grabbed Spike’s limp, pulseless wrist and clasped the first manacle around his bare skin. It felt like chaining up a corpse. When she dropped it, it fell against his side with a pathetic iron jangle. The noise did weird things to her stomach. She risked a glance at Spike’s face; it was its usual stark white, but somehow looked even more pale and sallow in the cheap light of her basement.

“I can take over,” Angel said beside her. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”

“No,” Buffy said firmly. “He’s my— He’s my responsibility.” She finished the chaining and drew back. “Do you think that’ll be enough?”

They both surveyed the set up. There weren’t any hooks or posts around strong enough to resist the pull of a vampire at full strength, so Buffy had improvised as best she could—one set of manacles binding his wrists, another at his ankles, yet  _another_  wrapping up around his legs, and then a final fourth weaving and locking them all together.

“For Spike?” Angel said. “No.”

Buffy’s face fell.

At her silence, he continued. “Buffy, it doesn’t matter how many chains you use. It’s not a question of  _if_  he breaks free, it’s a question of when. And when it happens, the first thing he’s going to do is come after you. It’s what he does. It’s all he knows. It’s all the demon knows.”

Buffy swallowed.

Her soulmate was a demon. An animalistic demon. Apparently it hadn’t been enough that the person—people?—upstairs had cursed her with a Slayer’s destiny. Nope, just as she thought she was finally starting to get the hang of things, they just had to go and throw  _this_ at her.

Hooray for Buffy.

Mystical punching bag of the cosmos.

“Let me know when he wakes up,” she finally said.

She plodded up the stairs, rubbing her temples. Her mom cornered her as soon as she reached the main floor hallway.

“Buffy,” she said, laying a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “We need to talk.”

Buffy sighed. “I know. Sorry about the chains and, I guess the prisoner, but I needed somewhere I could keep an eye on him and it won’t be for very long and—”

“I’m not talking about the chains,” her mom said, briefly shutting her eyes as if even just the mental image was too stressful to take. “Yet.”

Buffy stared. Thinking back, her mom had been mostly silent and compliant while she and Angel had dragged the unconscious vampire down into the basement. Almost too compliant…

Her eyes snapped wide in realization. “He  _told_  you?”

“He said a couple things… and I guessed the rest. Buffy, the thing about soulmates—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Buffy said tersely. She shook loose of her mother’s hold and headed for the stairs.

“Buffy! You chained a man in our basement. You can’t just go to bed and  _leave_  him there!”

Buffy spun back around. “Why not? It’s better than what he’d do to me! Spike wanted to kill me tonight, Mom! He’s  _always_ wanted to kill me. So yeah. Sorry if I’m not kick-lining at the thought of—”

The phone rang.

Thank God.

Buffy used the interruption to push past her mom and pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Buffy?” It was Willow, her voice small and trembling.

“Oh my God, Willow!” Buffy could stake herself in that moment; all wrapped up in her own drama, she’d completely forgotten about her best friend. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Do you need help?”

“No… But Xander…”

Buffy’s stomach lurched.

“Spike’s back,” Willow continued. “He locked me up in that old factory of his. Oz and Cordelia and Xander came and rescued me, but the stairs were old and on the way out Xander fell through and there was this steel bar and—” She broke off with a hiccuping sob. “It’s all my fault.”

“Is Xander…?” Buffy stopped herself, unsure whether she wanted the answer to that or not. “Where are you now?”

“Hospital,” Willow said. The knot in Buffy’s stomach loosened. Slightly. “Sunnydale Memorial. He’s lost a lot of blood, but the doctors said it missed all the important bits. They say if he makes it through the night, he’ll be fine, and that he  _should_  make it through… but oh God. What if he doesn’t?”

“Just stay there, Willow. I’ll be right over.” Buffy paused. “Are Oz and Cordelia there too?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Stay with them.”

“Oh, Buffy…?”

“Yeah?”

“What if Spike comes back?”

Buffy swallowed. She cast a shaky glance down the hall at the basement door. “Don’t worry. I’ve got that part of the problem under control… I think.”

After another promise that she’d be there as soon as possible, Buffy hung up. She turned and nearly smacked into her mother who’d been hovering over her shoulder.

“Mom!” Buffy hissed. “Don’t do—!” She took a calming breath. “I’m heading out.”

“But—”

“Xander’s in the hospital.”

“Oh my God,” her mom said, clutching the neck of her blouse.

“While I’m gone, I need you to stay  _out_  of the basement. Understand?”

Her mom gave her an obviously-didn’t-understand-at-all frown.

Buffy sighed in exasperation. “You want to know the  _reason_  Xander’s in the hospital?” She jabbed a finger at the floor, glaring, until comprehension finally dawned on her mother’s face.

“I’m sorry,” her mom said. “I didn’t…”

Buffy felt a twinge of guilt.

Alright, if she was being a hundred percent  _technically_  honest, a steel bar had attacked Xander, not a pair of claws and fangs… But her mom didn’t need to know that. Plus, it didn’t change the fact that one of her best friends was fighting for his life right now and he wouldn’t  _have_  to be if Spike had just stayed the hell away from Sunnydale like he’d originally promised.

She looked down at her palm and winced at the  _FIGHT ME_  still written across it.

Right. Had to cover that up before she met her friends. Leaving her mom, Buffy rummaged through the hallway closet until she found a pair of fingerless gloves next to the shelf of scarves and hats and other pseudo-winter gear. Once she’d pulled them on, she examined both hands, reassuring herself that the writing was completely invisible beneath the fabric.

That left one last thing.

Buffy braced herself, then opened the basement door and descended halfway down its steps. Angel looked up at her. Spike was still unconscious behind him, apparently victim to the meanest right hook she’d thrown in months.

“I’m headed to the hospital,” she said. “Xander—”

“I heard,” Angel said.

Buffy shivered slightly, wigged. She hated vampire hearing, even when Angel was the one using it.

“G-good,” she said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, so if you could keep watch until I…”

Buffy didn’t exactly know how to end that sentence. Until she came back and kicked Spike out of town? Dusted him? Broke out her mom’s fancy china and had some kind of friendly chat over tea and cakes?

She was startled out of her thoughts by Angel’s growls. “Should’ve dusted him back at the magic box. He’s just going to cause trouble.”

“I know. But I couldn’t— Not without…”

“Buffy…” Angel looked pained. “Spike is… He’s not your soulmate.” Buffy stared at him, confused, until he sighed. “Maybe he was once, when he was still alive, but the demon… You don’t understand. It steals  _everything._  When you talk to him, you’re only talking to an echo.”

Buffy swallowed. “I know,” she heard herself repeat, more hollow this time.

When Angel didn’t respond, she started back up the stairs.

Then she paused again.

“Angel?” Buffy asked. She waited for him to look her in the eyes. “This whole…  _thing_. It doesn’t mean anything. I mean, you and I… I never once—” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want this to come between us.”

Angel continued staring at her for several stretching moments.

“We’re not together anymore,” he finally said. “So what does it matter?”

Buffy flinched. His words lodged in her heart, scraping the whole way in. It took her a moment to re-gather her strength, then she tersely nodded and left.

* * *

Buffy hurried down the sterile halls of the hospital, narrowly resisting the urge to cradle her arms to herself. The hairs on the back of neck raised with every door she passed. At last she found Willow, Oz, and Cordelia outside Xander’s room.

“Buffy!” Willow cried before flinging herself into her friend’s arms.

Oz soon offered a gentle, brief hug. Cordelia hung back; her trademark vinegar tongue was silent, and her movements were tight and constrained like a violin string that was about to snap.

Reluctantly, Buffy drew away from Willow. After a moment of hesitation, she looked through the window of Xander’s room. Her friend was lying comatose on a hospital bed, arm hooked up to an IV and a series of monitoring machines. His face was pale. Lifeless.

Guilt rushed through her. If she hadn’t gotten distracted by Spike and her own stupid issues…

It was all her fault.

“It’s all my fault,” Willow echoed out loud.

Buffy jumped.

“No, baby,” Oz said, coming to her side and wrapping his arms around her. “Don’t say that.”

“But- But if I hadn’t gotten captured…”

“Right, because we all know you  _planned_  to knocked out and hauled away like a real-life Nell Fenwick,” Cordelia snapped. She crossed her arms. “We’re on the Hellmouth. Vampires happen. So stop blaming yourself, it’s annoying.” Willow sniffed again, and Cordelia groaned. “You really wanna do something useful? Break out your witchy powers and find that bleached-haired menace so I can get my revenge.”

Buffy flinched.

Willow turned from Oz, eyes widening. She cleared her throat. “I- I think I need to get my blood sugar up before I start thinking about any of that,” she said. “Buffy, do you want to come with me to the vending machine?”

“I can do a snack run if you need,” Oz said.

Willow shook her head. “No, I… I need the walk. Buffy?”

“Uhh… sure.”

Buffy took one more look through Xander’s window and then followed her friend silently down the hall. It took three turns to reach the vending machines. Willow stood in front of the glass, staring blankly at the choices like a computer that’d stopped operating.

Buffy coughed. “I can cover it.” As Willow turned, Buffy gestured weakly at the snacks. “Whatever you want, it’s on me.” She didn’t know how else to apologize. How to make things right.

“Thanks,” Willow said. She re-examined the choices one more time before stepping back. “Surprise me.”

Buffy blinked, then nodded. The ball now unexpectedly in her court, she didn’t feel like making a choice either. All the bags looked rather same-y. She eventually went with M&Ms and pretzels—one sweet choice, one salty—and offered both bags to Willow. Her friend took the pretzels, but instead of returning towards the group, she plopped down in one of the plastic chairs beside the machine. After a moment, Buffy joined her.

They munched in silence.

“So…” Willow eventually said, keeping her eyes on the opening of her pretzel bag. “I know this probably isn’t the best time, but I don’t know if there’s ever gonna  _be_  a ‘best time’, and I figured sooner was better and… well, when I was in the factory and it was just me and Spike, he said… He kind of said he was your soulmate?”

Buffy choked on her M&Ms. She coughed until she regained her breath. “What?!”

“I know! I know! I was stupid for even—”

“I can’t believe him!” Buffy snapped. “Did he just go around tonight telling _everyone_?!”

Willow’s eyes widened. “It’s true? Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Buffy flinched.

Shoot. She probably could’ve gone with denial and gotten away with it. Or at least gotten away with it until the next bombshell screw-up… Perhaps sooner  _was_  better. Plus, the fact that Willow was looking more shocked than disgusted at her— It was probably the best reaction she could’ve hoped for given the circumstances.

Buffy slumped back against the hospital wall. “I didn't know until tonight.”

“Wait. You mean you guys never wrote to each other until tonight? Or…?”

Buffy interlaced her fingers and pushed them down against her knees. Her skin looked washed out beneath the florescent lights.

“We wrote while I was growing up,” Buffy eventually said. “I stopped after I was Called.” She let out a bitter laugh. “I thought he was a normal person this whole time. Thought I was protecting him.”

“Oh…” Willow said. She poked around at the inside of her pretzel bag. “You should’ve told us.”

Buffy internally groaned.

And there it was—judgement and blame.

Buffy forced herself to shrug. “Didn’t think it mattered. Not like I was ever gonna write him again.”

“But, if he’s your soulmate—”

“He’s a vampire, Willow!” Buffy said. Then, before her friend could use Angel against her, quickly added: “ _Soulless_  vampire.”

Willow looked like she was going to say something, but then apparently decided against it. She nibbled on another pretzel. A couple of nurses wandered past.

“Spike said something about specific words last spring?” Willow eventually said. “He seemed confused that I didn’t know about them.”

Buffy stiffened. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Oh, okay…” Willow shifted in her seat. “But you know… Having a vampire for a soulmate, I don’t think it’s the end of the world. I mean, it’s not like you went out and asked for it. Plus there’re all kinds of soulmates. It doesn’t have to mean anything for you and Angel if you don’t want it.”

Buffy froze. The world seemed to narrow in on itself.

_We’re not together anymore. So what does it matter?_

“Just look at me and Oz and Tara,” Willow continued, completely oblivious. “Sure, Oz was a little phased at first, or, at least, as phased as Oz gets—which isn’t much, at least externally—but after enough talking, he understands that what Tara and I have is—”

“That’s great for you then!” Buffy snapped. There was a clattering sound; she’d unconsciously crushed her candy bag and M&Ms were scattering over the hospital floor. “I’m sorry not all of us can have a soulmate as good as Miss Totally Shiny Perfect Tara!”

Willow flinched back, staring at her in shock.

Embarrassed warmth flushed across Buffy’s cheeks. She wasn’t about to apologize to Willow though. Not when her friend had  _no_  idea what she was talking about. Not this time.

Buffy pushed herself to her feet.

“I’m- I’m going to go back and check on Xander again,” she said. Careful to avoid Willow’s eyes, she scooped up the majority of the fallen M&Ms and then staggered back down the hall.

* * *

Spike groaned. His head throbbed and, as he blinked his eyes open, the world was a slowly resolving blur. He tried to shift, tried to move…

He heard the clink of the chains a split second before he felt the iron.

“You shouldn’t have come back to Sunnydale,” said a familiar voice that echoed around the room.

Or maybe it was just his head that was doing the echoing.

Spike continued blinking until his grandsire’s ugly mug came looming into view. The two of them were in a barren room, some sort of basement judging by the staircase against the far wall.

“Fuck you,” Spike spat as soon as his mouth felt stable enough to form syllables without stuttering.

Angel sighed. “Eloquent as usual.”

Spike surveyed the dingy basement. There wasn’t much to look at—couple of metal shelves laden with cardboard boxes of unknown contents, a washer and dryer, a plastic basket of laundry…

“Where’s the Slayer?” he asked.

“Out. Just you and me.”

“Really?” Spike said, casting an eye at the otherwise empty room. “I hadn’t figured.”

“Enough with the chit-chat, Spike. Why did you come back here?”

Spike casually tested the strength of the chains binding his wrists—industrial—and then shrugged like he  _wasn’t_  currently trussed up like a pig in the South Pacific. “Felt like it.”

“You’re planning something. I know it.

“Believe what you think.” Spike gingerly pushed himself up into a sitting position. Several of the chains dug uncomfortably into his lower thighs.

“I’m not going to let you abuse your connection—William’s connection—to hurt her.”

A laugh barked its way up Spike’s throat; he couldn’t stop it. “A little too late for that, Peaches. And  _real_  lovely sentiment comin’ from you, seeing as you’re the only one who’s ever done the hurtin’.”

Angel growled, his fangs elongating. “That wasn’t me.”

“Sure, keeping singing that verse. I’m sure it’ll never get old.”

“What have you written on her?”

Spike lifted an eyebrow. A kind of primal satisfaction curled through him as he realized he had access to part of the Slayer that his grandsire would  _never_  be able to touch, no matter how much the tosser ached for it. “And here I thought you knew better,” he leered. “Words between soulmates—those are private words, they are.”

Angel clenched a hand around Spike’s throat. “ _Tell_  me.”

“Or what?” Spike said. “Gonna shove a knife in my gut again?”

The pressure tightened. Angel’s eyes had narrowed into near slits. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t stake you right now.”

Belatedly, Spike realized just how vulnerable he actually was at the moment. One good movement and his neck would be snapped off, a stake plunged through his chest. And, bound as he was, there was nothing he could do to stop it. Spike shifted in his chains and casted for an excuse.

“Because the Slayer doesn’t want you to,” he heard himself say.

“What Buffy doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I’ll say you escaped, tried to attack me.”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Right. Because lies are the lifeblood of every healthy relationship—”

Angel punched him in the jaw. Spike fell, his head hitting the basement floor with a loud crack. It was a miracle he managed to remain conscious.

“You don't care about her,” Angel growled. “So don’t you _dare_  try and pretend like you do.”

Spike tongued the blood that was pooling in various pockets of his mouth, then spat it out as he pushed himself back up. “Newsflash, Peaches. Just cause you’re a right cat-torturer without a soul doesn't mean we all are.”

A stake appeared in Angel’s hand.

Spike tensed again—why could he never keep his mouth from running off?—but luckily his grandsire remained where he was. Glaring. Broody.

Somewhat more confident in the immediate future of his continued existence, Spike settled back against the basement wall. He subtly pulled against his chains again. No give. Angel or Slayer—whoever’d trussed him up had done a bang up job of it. If he tried to escape right now, he’d be dust before he reached the first of the basement steps.

He eyed the stake still clenched in Angel’s hand.

He was still prisoner, something he  _would_  get his revenge for, but perhaps sitting and waiting for now wouldn’t be too terrible after all.

* * *

The Mayor opened his cabinet and hung his putter up onto its proper peg. There was knock at his door.

“Yes?” he said, turning.

Allan entered. “The… committee you sent out earlier, didn’t quite achieve its goals.”

The Mayor frowned. “What happened?”

“Buffy Summers. She and Spike teamed up and fought them off.”

“An alliance?” the Mayor said, both eyebrows raising. “Unexpected, true, but it’s not like we can pretend this is the first time it’s ever happened. Oh well, better planning next time. Where are the two now?”

“Miss Summers is at Sunnydale Memorial. Her friend, Xander Harris, was apparently admitted an hour ago. No neck trauma,” Allan added before the Mayor could ask. “As for the vampire, he and Miss Summers were spotted soon after the committee… disbanded. She was carrying him. He appeared to be unconscious.”

“I see,” the Mayor said as he crossed the room. “Was it one of ours that knocked the blow? Or…?”

“We’re still gathering information.”

The Mayor nodded several times. He clasped his hands behind his back and approached the window. “Spike, Spike, Spike… The kid has flair, I’ll give him that. But this year… It’s like a finely balanced math problem. Can’t have a rogue variable knocking numbers out of place.”

Allan swallowed. “Should I have Mr. Trick assemble another committee?”

The Mayor stared out the window for a long moment. “No,” he said. His face suddenly broke into a wide grin. “I think I have a better idea.”


	6. Lovers Talk

Buffy stumbled back up the front steps of her house, her eyelids drooping with exhaustion. All she wanted was to flop into bed and let sleep carry her out of the rest of this cursed night.

“Buffy?” her mom called before she’d made it two feet past the door.

Buffy winced at the note of disapproval in her voice. Ahead of her, the staircase beckoned longingly. To its left, her mom stood in the middle of the hallway with her arms crossed.

“I’m tired,” Buffy said automatically.

Her mom sighed. “I know, honey. But you have to take care of your… You have to take care of Spike.”

Buffy looked wistfully at the staircase again. A nearly inaudible whimper escaped her throat. She reluctantly dragged her gaze to her mother’s equally pinched and tired face.

“But Angel’s been taking care of him fine so far, right?” Buffy tried one last time. “I’m sure he can keep guard for just a couple more hours…”

Her mom shifted. Moving close to her daughter, she whispered, “Buffy… I’m not comfortable with him in the house.”

Buffy sighed. “I know. But it’s only temporary. And you don’t have to worry about him escaping. I chained him up tighter than a size eight girl shoving herself into a size five shoe.”

“I wasn’t talking about Spike.”

Buffy blinked, staring at her mom until comprehension dawned. Wait. Two vampires in the basement and she was worried about the one that  _had_ a soul? Unfortunately, Buffy couldn’t find the strength argue right now. Plus her head was beginning to pound. She’d just need to suck it up and—

“Fine,” Buffy snapped. “I’ll…” She paused, trying to remember the way her mom had phrased it. “I’ll take  _care_  of Spike.” Exhaustion laced her words with only half-unintentional bitterness.

She brushed past her mom and yanked open the basement door.

“Buffy?”

Buffy whirled around. “What?” she demanded.

“I know you must be confused,” her mom began hesitantly. “And you have good reason to be. But… give it at least one day, okay? I don’t want you doing anything hasty you might regret.”

“It’s Spike,” Buffy said flatly. “Anything I  _do_  to him will be the opposite of regret.”

She stomped down the basement stairs before her mom could say anything else, her feet pounding satisfyingly against each step. She got all the way to the bottom before she looked sideways and froze.

Oh.

Spike was awake.

They stared at each other. Spike’s expression was distant, unreadable. He didn’t seem particularly angry about his currently captive status though, his brows calm and unfurrowed above a pair of winter blue eyes… Had they always been that blue?

Angel cleared his throat.

Right.

She’d come down here to take care of the situation.

Buffy stayed at the foot of the stairs.

She had no idea how to take care of the situation.

A prickling sensation began to crawl over her skin as Angel continuedto stare at her. He was judging her. Judging her just like Willow had briefly— Actually… Willow hadn’t really judged her at all.

Huh.

The silence thickened. Buffy fidgeted. None of them were saying anything, and if they were waiting on her, Buffy suddenly realized they were going to be waiting a long time because she wouldn’t be  _able_  to say anything if she didn’t get some space soon to just breathe and  _think_ …

“Angel?” she finally said. “I need you to leave.”

He looked shocked. “Buffy, you can’t—”

“Please.”

The shock turned into pain. “I suppose I could wait upstairs…”

Buffy shook her head. Angel had admitted he’d overheard her phone conversation with Willow through the floor. Him retreating upstairs would give her the same privacy level as covering her head with a fluffy blanket.

“My mom’s been kind of freaked by everything…” she said, infusing her tone with as much warmth as she could muster. “If you could maybe give us both some time? Come back tomorrow?”

Angel’s jaw set. He looked like he was going to argue, but then—with a final dark glance at Spike—he nodded, passing her to head back up the stairs. Buffy’s eyes lingered on the door long after he was gone.

There was a snort behind her. “Your  _mum’s_  been kind of freaked? You  _both_  need time? Real transparent, that.”

Buffy whirled around. Spike was glaring at the floor, his face sullen.

She crossed her arms. “So should I keep calling you Spike?” she heard herself ask. “Or should I switch back to William?”

He flinched, eyes growing even more intent on the floor. “Whatever you want,” he muttered. “Doesn't matter.”

“Why not?”

“You’re gonna dust me.”

He made the fate sound so inevitable that it startled her.

“N-no…” Buffy said. Spike finally looked up, his blue eyes locking onto hers. “Not yet, anyways.”

He didn’t say anything and she didn’t either.

She continued staring at him, trying to line the vampire currently chained up against her basement wall with the memories of William she’d had since childhood. They didn’t mesh. Eventually Buffy sat down on the cement floor in front of him, just out of reach if he were to suddenly lunge. The cold of the concrete seeped through the thin denim of her jeans as she re-examined him from eye-level. She carefully noted the general disarray of his clothes, his hair, the pale redness that now lined the bottom of his eyes… As she took a small sniff, she wrinkled her nose. Spike still reeked of alcohol (and she wouldn’t have been surprised if she did a little too now after carting him halfway across Sunnydale). Her eyes continued down, lingering on his right hand where it was closed into a fist. She swallowed, and tightened her own.

“Why?” Buffy finally asked.

“Why what?”

Buffy gestured vaguely towards Spike’s fist. He looked confused. With an exasperated sigh, she slipped off her fingerless glove and showed him the  _FIGHT ME_  still written across her palm.

“Oh. That.” Spike shrugged casually. “Cause I wanted to fight you, of course.”

Buffy took a sharp breath, fighting the urge to whip out one of the several stakes hidden in her jacket. He was being irritating on purpose. He had to be. “Not  _that_ ,” she groaned. “I mean the…” She gestured vaguely over all of her.

Spike grimaced in disbelief. “What? You think I had some sort of  _say_  in connectin’ us? You think I  _wanted_  a Slayer for a soulmate?!” He paused and glanced up at the ceiling. “Actually, that revelation wasn’t too bad. Already did two in… figured it was the Powers' way of tellin’ me I was due for a third.”

“Ugh! You’re disgusting!”

“I’m a vampire.”

“But how can you… you can’t be my…” Buffy scrambled to clutch hold of the obvious logic that was screaming in her face, just out of reach. “Vampires don’t even have souls!”

“Didn’t see you takin’ up this particular complaint with Angelus.”

“What?” Buffy wrinkled her nose. “Angel doesn’t have a soulmate.”

The younger vampire stared at her in confusion that was so raw and honest that Buffy found herself fidgeting. “Uhh… hello,” he finally said. “Darla?” He paused, seemingly waiting for Buffy to say something. When she didn’t, his tongue curled behind his teeth in a dangerous leer. “Oh. Guess your precious  _Angel_ never told you ‘bout that bit then.”

Spike was lying.

He had to be lying.

Buffy opened her mouth to tell him that, but she couldn’t seem to form her words into an audible retort.

“Makes sense he’d have kept it from you,” Spike continued, smug with glee. “Just like you kept me from him. Didn’t fit in to your star-crossed lover fantasies, did I? Promises of eternal love lose a bit of their punch when you know the other’s gotta soulmate waitin’ in the wings. Still, Angelus and Darla go way back.” Spike snorted again, shaking his head. “Should’ve seem ‘em right after Angelus got his soul back that first time. Even with his new-found guilt, he was beggin’ her to take him back. Covered Darla’s body with writing for weeks. Bitch screamed up a bloody storm, but there was nothin’ she could do to scrub it off…” He paused, looking straight at Buffy again. Stripping her bare. “‘Course… you’d know about that now, wouldn’t you?”

Buffy’s lungs were suddenly tight, the air hard to breathe. “Angel staked Darla,” she said firmly.

“Huh… Well. Suppose there’ve been more shockin’ things.”

She remained silent. There had to be a reason why Angel had lied to her about— Well. Actually, she hadn’t talked to Angel about any soulmate stuff until  _after_  Darla had been dusted, so technically he  _had_  been telling her the truth, just not the  _full_  truth…

“Though speakin’ of Angel,” Spike said. “Kinda thought he would’ve told you ‘bout me after the whole return of the bleedin’ soul thing. As a warning, if nothin’ else.” He paused, suddenly interested examining his chipped, black fingernails. “Though I suppose if you didn’t ask…”

Buffy swallowed. “I did ask.”

Spike let out a tired sigh. “Then he lied ‘bout that too?”

Buffy drew her shoulders back defensively. She’d been trying to avoid thinking about that, but—

“Angel didn’t lie,” she mumbled. “He… He said I didn’t know you.”

Spike lifted an eyebrow. “Which would be a lie,” he said, as though explaining something to a pre-schooler.

“Shut up!”

“Fine.” Spike raised his hands in surrender, chains clinking with them. “Angel, forbidden topic. I get it.”

Buffy glared at him, but stayed silent. She uncurled her hands and stared at her palms. Spike’s writing stared back. She was going to have to scrub it off sometime before school tomorrow. Which meant scrubbing it off Spike. At least, this time, she  _could_  scrub it off…

She shivered at the memory.

“Something wrong, pet?”

Buffy snapped her hard shell back around her. As she stared at him, she suddenly realized she had to know… Even if he was bound to lie, she had to  _ask_ …

And if Spike answered ‘yes,’ then he was dust, her mother’s lecture about regrets be damned.

“What Angelus did to me last spring…” Buffy started. She held his eyes as she picked at the fabric of her other glove. “It was your handwriting, but none of it was you… was it?” She stared at his face, searching it for even the slightest  _glimmer_  of a lie.

Spike only sighed. He slumped backwards and looked at the washer/dryer combo. “Bloody waste of a safe word if it’d been.”

“But why…?”

He kept his eyes off her as he shrugged. “You deserve to go out fair and square, Slayer.”

“But you could’ve had—”

“That’s not the way I play the game, okay?!” Spike snapped his eyes to hers; she froze beneath their piercing glare. “And it was my body too.”

Slowly, he readjusted himself into a kind of sulking curl, the best he could do with four sets of chains wrapped around him. Buffy was hesitant to press further. He looked like a wounded animal (a rabid raccoon maybe… or a mountain lion) that she’d backed into a corner—mostly harmless, but it was the “mostly” that’d get her. Buffy trailed her fingers over her palm, trying to ignore the way her heart pounded against her chest. She could wash his mark off in the morning. For now she needed to retreat back to some place where things made sense.

A tactical retreat.

Pulling her fingerless glove back on, Buffy stood and made her way towards the basement steps.

“So is that it then?” Spike sneered behind her. “Just gonna lock me up and leave me down here? The Slayer's pet monster? Her deep dark secret?”

Buffy rounded on him. “You were the one who kept it a secret!” she hissed.

Spike stared at her for several long, stretching moments. Then his head hung. “’swas never meant to…”

Whatever else he was going to say was lost in silence.

Buffy swallowed. Finally she gave up and continued making her way upstairs. She closed the door behind her with a small click.

“Buffy?”

Her mom was waiting for her—had been waiting for her—in the main hallway. Buffy sighed. Just one more short conversation and then maybe, hopefully she could  _finally_  get to bed.

“Did Angel leave?” Buffy asked. She probably should’ve made sure of that  _before_  her full talk with Spike, but too late now.

Her mom nodded. “He told me he’d be back tomorrow?”

“Yeah… I mean, Spike’s his problem too, so it only made sense to…”

She waited for her mom to say something.

Anything.

Buffy let out an impatient sigh. “Hey. Isn’t this the part where you tell me ‘Oh no, Buffy. Don’t stake Spike!’ ?” She waved her hands for extra drama.

“Why? Are you going to stake him?”

“No— I mean, yes! I mean… I haven’t decided yet.” Buffy took a deep breath. “I’m gonna do the full 24 hours thing, alright? Like you told me. And then… well, I don’t know what I’ll do then, but that’ll be Future Buffy’s problem, I guess.” She paused. Looked at her mom. “You  _are_  okay with this, aren’t you? I know I should’ve probably asked you before I chained an undead serial killer up in our basement, but—”

“You made the chains tight?”

Buffy nodded.

Her mom looked thoughtful. “Then that should be good enough, I think.”

Buffy frowned, crossing her arms. While she wasn’t one to knock a gift horse in the mouth, there was something disconcerting about her mother’s lack of fear. “You know, for someone who’s come up with, like, forty dozen metaphors to avoid directly talking about my nightly slayage, you’re taking this weirdly good,” Buffy said. She peered at her mom with narrowed eyes. “You do know Spike’s evil, right? That there’s a chance of him breaking out and murdering us in our sleep?”

Her mom held out an arm and—despite her irritation—Buffy instinctually moved in, letting the older woman tug her close to her shoulder as she moved them both towards the upper staircase. “I know,” her mom said. “But I think he already had a chance like that… and he decided to pass it up for marshmallows.”

Buffy’s head whipped around. Obviously she’d just misheard something. “Spike passed what up for  _huh_?”

Her mom only proceeded to giggle.

* * *

“Damn, B,” Faith said as Buffy finished recapping the events of last night. Or rather, an abridged version of last night. “I can’t believe I missed all the fun.”

Buffy glared at her fellow slayer. “Xander almost dying is not ‘fun.’”

As if summoned, they turned left at the next intersection and Sunnydale Memorial came into view. Willow had gone first, escaping school right at the final bell. Oz and Cordelia had had some quick school-related issues to take care of but had left soon after. Buffy and Faith had been forced to hang back entirely, letting Giles beat them over the head with a painfully unneeded lecture about the new dangers lurking behind every corner now that Spike had returned to Sunnydale.

Buffy hadn’t told her watcher about any of the soulmate stuff. Hadn’t told Faith or Oz or Cordelia or… Well, she hadn’t told anyone who hadn’t outright already guessed it. Obviously it was only a matter of time, but for now Buffy just tried to have faith that Willow and her mom would stay quiet.

And that Xander would stay alive.

Faith groaned. “Jeez, B. Just trying to lighten the mood.”

Buffy threw her another dark look, but didn’t say anything.

The hospital lobby was bright and welcoming as far as hospitals went (aka not bright or welcoming in slightest). Buffy shivered, hanging back and trying not to let her gaze linger on the wheelchair-bound patients as Faith signed them both in. With a final check at the wall clock behind the desk, Faith finished scribbling and nodded towards the left-side hallway.

Xander’s room.

They hadn’t gotten halfway there when Cordelia suddenly appeared, storming towards them. Her face was red and tear-streaked.

“Cord—” Buffy started before Cordelia shoved past her, letting their shoulders hit. The dark-haired girl kept moving and was gone before Buffy could think to stop her.

“Damn…” Faith said, scoffing. “What’s her problem?”

Buffy had gone pale.

Xander.

She rushed towards his room, nearly running into Oz at the next intersection.

“Oz!” Buffy gasped. “Xander, is he—?”

Oz’s face was set in a tight line. “He’s fine,” he said shortly.

Then he left as well.

Buffy stayed where she was, watching him go in confusion. Twenty feet behind her, Faith twirled slowly, rotating her body to follow his as he passed, and then shrugged wide-eyed at Buffy.

They eventually found Willow leaning against the wall outside Xander’s room, opening sobbing.

Buffy’s stomach dropped again before she forced herself to remember that Oz had said Xander was fine. Oz wouldn’t have lied about that.

“Willow?” Buffy ventured.

Her best friend’s head lifted up. As her eyes focused on Buffy, she let out another loud sob. A second later she’d crossed the hallway and buried her face in Buffy’s shoulder.

“I-I-I…” she stuttered between tears. “I’ve ruined everything.”

Buffy numbly reached out, patting Willow’s back in automatic, hopefully reassuring movements as Faith watched on with raised eyebrows.

What the hell had happened now?

* * *

With her hands shoved tightly into her front jean pockets, Buffy headed home.

Alone.

Despite her resolution to feel sad, she couldn’t keep the lightness out of her step. Her skin tingled with an almost-sick feeling of satisfaction that refused to leave.

Perfect Willow with her perfect boyfriend and perfect platonic soulmate apparently didn’t know as much about love and feelings as she’d always thought. After five minutes of crying, Buffy and Faith had been able to tug out the story, which had been…

Xander and Willow.

Kissing in his hospital room before their respective others had arrived. Kissing  _while_  their respective others had arrived.

Buffy shivered.

School tomorrow was  _not_  going to be pretty.

At the corner of Jackson Street and Revello Drive, Buffy stopped. She hefted her backpack, testing its weight, making sure didn’t have any library books within that she owed or borrowed stuff she had to return or really anything that could’ve given her  _any_ excuse to delay going home. Finding nothing, Buffy sucked up her reluctance and pressed forward.

Maybe if Buffy was really really nice, her mom would at least let her eat dinner before making her deal with… with the basement menace.

As she trudged along, growing closer and closer, Buffy suddenly spotted a police car outside her house. It was empty, the officer presumably inside.

Her stomach dropped.

She sprinted the rest of the way home. “Mom!” she yelled, bursting through the front door.

“Buffy!” Her mom was in the living room, standing next to the police officer. Safe. Unharmed.

They hugged each other tightly.

“What happened?” Buffy finally asked, drawing back.

“I don’t know,” her mom said. Her eyes were wide as she glanced briefly at the police officer. “The lock was broken when I got home from the gallery. I knew— I knew it could be dangerous, and I couldn’t get in contact with you, so I called the police.”

A break in?

Buffy looked around the untouched living room. Nothing looked…

Unless—

“A good thing you did, ma’am,” the officer said. “Luckily nothing appears to be stolen. We’ll keep a squad car in the neighborhood though, just in case. Call us if you notice anything suspicious.” If the officer recognized Buffy, knew anything about her spotty history re: murder and the Sunnydale PD, he didn’t say anything. With a small adjustment to his cap, he nodded at the two women and left.

As soon as the front door clicked shut, Buffy turned back to her mom. “And… Spike?” she asked quietly.

Her mother’s silent look told her all she needed to know. Buffy rushed to the basement, taking the stairs three at a time.

It was empty.

Her hands shot to her pockets. Empty.

She tore back upstairs.

“Buffy, I—” her mom started, but Buffy ignored her, sprinting all the way up to her bedroom. She scoured her dresser, scrambling for the first pen she could find, and yanked up the left sleeve of her sweater.

 _Where the hell are you?_  she scratched out, the pen digging in and stinging with each letter.

Message sent, she leaned back. Rolled up her other sleeve. Focused on her breathing—in and out through her nose. Waited. After an agonizing minute, Buffy watched as a familiar handwriting slowly curled itself across her opposite arm:

_Wouldn’t you like to know?_


	7. Takes Two to Play

**_EARLIER THAT DAY_ **

Spike glowered at his captors as they tugged him down the drab, florescent-lit corridor. He kept his demon face at the front, ready to snarl and snap at any passersby, but the governmental building—or at least this wing of the building—was completely empty. A black vampire he didn’t recognize from his last stay in Sunnydale led the way. Two massive, thick-witted fledges were attached on either side of Spike’s arms, simultaneously immobilizing him while propelling him forward. Despite his baser urges, Spike knew it wouldn’t do him any good to struggle. Though he hated to admit it, he’d always been at the lower end of the brute strength scale, relying instead on speed and inertia to take down his foes.

The four sets of chains still wrapped around his body weren’t exactly doing him any wonders on that front either.

Finally, the black vampire stepped into an office and Spike was roughly dragged in after him. Spike growled at the fledges, but they only tightened their grip He felt his right humerus threaten to crack.

“Spike!” a cheerful voice exclaimed. “So glad you could join us!”

Spike took in the speaker. From his generic suit and slicked-back, slightly balding hair, he looked like nothing more than a middle-aged, government-subsidized pencil pusher… but middle-aged pencil pushers had no right to be as down-right  _giddy_  as the man standing before him.

“I’ve heard so many great things about you,” the man continued, “And can I say, it is an  _honor_  to finally meet face to face.” He grin widened. “Slayer of slayers,” he said with an awe-filled tone. “They don’t give titles out like that everyday.”

“S’that right?” Spike did his best to keep his face cool and disinterested. After all, despite the vampires apparently under the man’s control, he still smelled human. “Always glad to see my reputation proceedin’ me. Wish I could say the same ‘bout you.”

The man smacked himself in the forehead. “Right! Where  _are_  my manners?” He held out a hand. “Mayor Richard Wilkins III. At your service.”

Spike shifted, arms and hands still chained together. Figures the man would be into the bloody power plays already. “You at my service? Sorry for doubtin’, but it doesn’t quite look that way to me at the mo’.”

“Ha!” the Mayor said. He nodded at a black vampire. “Look at him! I mean just look at him! Tied up like a Christmas turkey but does he let that get to him? Not one bit! I love it!”

Spike took an unnecessary breath as he began to truly take stock of his current situation. A human controlling fledges was one thing. The black vampire though… He wasn’t old, hardly a master, but he wasn’t stupid either. Vampires like him didn’t take orders. They obliged requests that were currently entertaining.

The Mayor caught Spike’s discerning eye and smiled.

With a snap of his fingers, the fledges unchained Spike. They stepped back as Spike growled, but remained within emergency tackling distance. The Mayor, seemingly oblivious to the primitive display of dominance, moved towards a small cabinet and pulled out a liquor bottle and two glasses.

“I’m going to be level with you, Spike,” he said as he poured the drinks. “I’m just a simple man looking for a bit of simple fun, and I’m  _concerned_  that the Slayer might have ideas of interrupting that fun. Sound familiar?”

He held out one glass to Spike, who took it. “S’pose so…” Spike said, still wary. “This is your way of askin’ me to do your dirty work?”

“Oh, no! Nothing like that. What I’m proposing is more… Well, let’s call it an alliance for the civil good.”

Spike lifted an eyebrow.  _Civic good?_  “And why should I agree to anythin’ like that?”

The Mayor shrugged and smiled. “Why not?”

Spike kept an eye on the black vampire as he weighed his options. The Mayor was cocky—so cocky, he was just  _begging_  for someone to bring him down a few pegs (or a few pints)—but it wasn’t Angelus’ insufferable kind of cocky. The kind of cocky that’d triggered his original love affair with railroad spikes all those years ago…

Holding up his glass, Spike sniffed at the liquid—it seemed okay—and then downed the whole thing in one gulp.

Fangs still extended, he grinned. “What did you have in mind?”

* * *

**_DECEMBER 1998_ **

Buffy sat hunched over the library table, her elbow braced against its surface while her palm pressed into the side of her cheek. A mini-tower of books lay stacked up in front of her. A small sheet to her left listed the schedule of upcoming finals; they stretched across next week like some sort of deadly domino line. Bloody, deadly dominos.

She really needed to stop trying with the metaphors.

Beside her, Willow was one hundred percent sucked into her own studying. Legit studying, not the stare-at-the-page-and-hope-brain-kicks-in-eventually kind that Buffy was currently stuck at.

Buffy sighed, jealous of her friend’s concentration. She tapped the bottom end of her gel pen against her history textbook. Stared at its pages a little harder. Still not working. With a little exhausted huff, she slumped back. Then, checking to make sure it still was just her and Willow in the library—Giles had been called out to some faculty meeting half an hour ago—Buffy rolled up her sweater sleeves.

And sighed again.

It was a blank tic-tac-toe grid. They popped up on her right arm roughly every three days or so, and this one hadn’t been there when Buffy had last checked in the bathroom, so Sp— the  _menace_  must’ve drawn it sometime within the past hour. Buffy glared at it, as if that’d have the power to make the criss-crossing lines fade and vanish.

It didn’t.

She continued tapping her textbook with her gel pen, as she debated her options—ignore him or respond. As much as she hated herself for responding, ignoring him wasn’t an option. Not when ignoring him meant ignoring all the people he had to be killing now, night after night after night. She was the Slayer. She didn’t get to throw away a potential method of tracking him just because of her own hangups. Well, “hangups” probably wasn’t the right word… completely justified disgust and wigginess was more like it.

 _Crazy day_ , Buffy wrote, pointedly ignoring the tic-tac-toe grid on her opposite arm.  _Did you hear those ambulances that torn through the center of town this morning?_

It was a lame method of interrogation, but she didn’t know what else to do. Despite putting all the Scoobies on the lookout and Willow’s best attempt at a locator spell, Spike had completely disappeared. Vanished. Gone. And if he hadn’t been consistently attempting to loop her into one of the silly games they’d used to— Ugh. Buffy didn’t want to think about the fact that she’d spent hundreds of elementary school afternoons on the school bus playing tic-tac-toe with  _Spike_  of all people. It was just so… so…  _wrong_. Anyway, if not for that, Buffy would’ve almost assumed he was dead. Okay, technically Spike  _was_ dead, he just wasn’t “dead” dead. She supposed he could’ve skipped town again, but her instincts told her he was still in Sunnydale. He was still in Sunnydale and he was planning something.

As for what that “something” was though… Buffy had no clue, and not knowing was currently driving her up the wall.

Spike’s response text began to appear in tight loops and swirls. Buffy had no idea how he was always so quick to answer, since he wore that stupid duster all the time which should’ve hidden her writing from sight. (Also, how unfair was it that  _Spike_  of all people had such good handwriting?  _Totally_ not fair.)

_if this is your way of tryin to sniff out my location, you’re doing a right sloppy job of it_

Buffy glowered at his words. It  _was_  what she’d been trying to do. She’d spent half of English class thinking up that trap of a question. She’d been pretty proud of it too.

 _also i’m waiting_ , he wrote. An arrow appeared, pointing at the tic-tac-toe grid.

Buffy scowled and scribbled through it.

_nice… but i believe the game is played with Xs and Os, love_

_I don’t have time for games_

_life’s a game_

Buffy huffed in irritation. She was  _not_  going to let him drag her into an unwanted conversation. It was bad enough that it’d already happened before, that they were already reaching that point again… But she couldn’t help it. She hated letting him have the last word.

Buckling down against the impulse this time, Buffy wrapped both of her hands around the edges of her textbook—not that he could see the defiant gesture—and focused on burning holes in the pages with her eyes. She was getting really good at staring at one word in particular—“reconstruction”—until she spotted, out of the corner of her eyes, a new line of text looping itself below the last:

 _oh, right. finals week. studying and all that rot,_  he wrote. Then, after a pause:  _could make it quick, you know. help you cheat again_

Buffy inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring.  _NO_

She glared at her arm like that’d let her transmit her raw hatred to him as well.

Willow’s head turned, finally distracted at last. “Spike?” she guessed before trying to peer at Buffy’s arm. “Is he trying to play hangman with bad words again?”

“Worse,” Buffy sighed, rolling her eyes as she showed Willow her arm.

Willow read in silence, her eyes traveling the length of the conversation, and then she gasped dramatically. “Again?! He’s helped you  _cheat_ before?”

Buffy shushed her as she snapped her arm back. The library was empty but very echoey, and Buffy knew from experience how easy it was to overhear shouted things from the connecting hallway. Knowing her luck, Principal Synder was lurking outside and just foaming at the mouth to fail her…

“It was only a couple of times,” Buffy quickly said. “And it was back in elementary school. Forever ago. Practically a different lifetime.”

“Uh huh…”

“It  _was_ ,” Buffy maintained. She cradled her arm to her chest, rubbing a hand over the text.

“Well, cheating aside,” Willow said, straightening as she recollected herself. “I think it’s kinda cute.”

Buffy stared at her.

“Keyword obviously being  _kinda_! I mean, sure, he’s still a vampire with all the biting and the rawr… But it’s nice that you guys have a understanding and he keeps all his writing to just your arm. That’s pretty respectful given… well, vampire.”

Buffy shifted uncomfortably in her wooden chair. She hadn’t told Willow anything about the writing that Angelus had tortured her with last spring. Sometimes she thought that Willow suspected, but she was afraid to ask and unintentionally confirm anything. And she didn’t  _want_ to tell Willow about the writing. Angelus had been behind those words, not Angel, and bringing up it now would just put him and her friends at odds again.

Thankfully she was saved by the library door opening. Buffy quickly rolled down her sleeves as Oz slunk in.

Willow gave him a perky smile. A tight and fragile perky smile. “Hi.”

Oz nodded back. “Hi.”

He sat down across from them, his movements tense. He and Willow were slowly making up after the hospital fiasco. Painfully slow, but at least it was something. Xander and Cordelia… not so much.

“Still studying?” Oz asked, despite the obvious evidence sprawled across the table. “Will, you’re going to be fine.”

“Sure. You know who else says that? All the cool kids say right before they get their tests back and see a shiny, red ‘B’ written straight across the top.” She gasped. “Or a ‘C’…” Her eyes suddenly glazed over, the concept of mediocrity so horrific that it’d temporarily sucked her brain into another dimension.

“Oz is right,” Buffy said, laying a gentle hand against her friend’s shoulder. “Knowing you, you’ll probably score higher than the rest of the class combined. As for the rest of us mortals…” Buffy stretched her arms out over her head as she frowned at her textbook. Then she let her arms drop and pouted. “Why do they schedule finals right before Christmas? Isn’t the time of year where we’re supposed to be carefree and singing ‘Deck the Halls’ and ‘Peace to Good Men’ and stuff?” She wrinkled her nose. “And why is it peace to  _just_  men?”

Willow sighed. “Well, we could always have finals  _after_ winter break. Sure if you asked Principal Synder, he’d be up for changing it. Then we could spend all of our vacation days studying too.”

Buffy whitened in horror. “Never mind.”

Oz chuckled. “You’ve  _both_  got this.”

“So says the guy who’s not taking any finals,” Willow muttered.

“Huh? I’m totally—”

“You’re  _retaking_  them,” Willow said, pushing a finger into his chest. “That’s a huge difference. Right, Buffy?”

“Major.”

“Yeah, well… I forgot a lot,” Oz said. The two girls stared at him. “A little,” he amended.

Buffy sighed. She needed to stop talking about finals; she wasn’t even actively studying for them right now and they were starting to give her a headache. “So Oz,” she said. “ You’re still doing that gig on Christmas night?”

Oz nodded. “Set starts at eight,” he confirmed. “You guys coming? I know it’s Christmas and if you’ve got family stuff or just stuff… that’s cool.”

“Well,” Willow said slowly. “Seeing as how my family once described Christmas as—and I quote—‘the foul core of the stench-filled garbage heap that’s modern American consumerism’… Yeah, I think I’m free. Buffy?”

“Same. My mom and I… It’s mostly Christmas Eve that’s special to us, so I should be good.”

“Awesome,” Oz said. “You can invite Angel too, when you see him.”

Buffy flinched. She could sense Willow staring at her with a similar pinched look of worry.

Her reaction was stupid. It wasn’t like things had been going  _wrong_  between her and Angel… not externally wrong at least, no heated straight-out arguments. But there was… something there. A curtain hanging between them that neither of them could tear through. Or wanted to tear through. And Buffy didn’t need an encyclopedia to know what it was:

Spike.

If Buffy was currently pissed off at the bleach-haired vampire for anything, she was pissed off at him for that. He wasn’t even physically _here_  and he was still somehow getting between her and Angel who kept making excuses these days to avoid seeing her. It was a miracle that Buffy had managed to tail Angel long enough to confirm that, no, he had nothing to do with Spike’s disappearance. And she kept wanting to tell him, kept wanting to reassure him that Spike meant nothing to her—because despite Angel’s protests otherwise, that was  _obviously_  what he was brooding about—but every single time Buffy tried, it felt like Angel closed himself off just a little more. Felt like he believed her less and less. And it wasn’t fair! Angel had come back from hell for her! Why had the Powers saved him if not so they could be together and that’s right, they were  _supposed_ to be together and Spike was ruining it and—!

“Uh, Buffy?”

Buffy startled out of her thoughts, felt a cool stickiness on her hand, and then yelped.

She had crushed the gel pen she’d been holding. The sparkly purple ink was dripping down the various grooves of her fist. She quickly fumbled for her notebook. Ripping out a blank sheet, she started mopping up the mess as best as she could.

“Right,” Buffy said, once most of the wet ink been cleaned up. Her hand was stained though. “Angel. I’ll tell him. Willow— Can you watch my stuff? Just for a tic?”

As soon as Willow nodded, Buffy power-walked her way towards the nearest bathroom, determined to scrub her skin clean before Spike could pester her about the latest disaster in her life.

* * *

Buffy stood back with a smile, her hands full of bunched up paper towels as she watched Faith help her mom hang up the rest of the Christmas ornaments. Her eyes slowly drifted up to the star hanging over the tree in place of the usual angel.

She felt her smile fall.

Dammit, why did his name have to be such a symbolic, common place word? The jerk hadn’t spoken to her for the past week and—

Her mom turned. “Oh good.” She nodded at the ornament she’d accidentally dropped a minute ago—one of those fragile, mass produced red baubles. “Careful not to cut yourself.”

Buffy nodded and knelt down to sweep up the mess. Once she was sure she’d gotten all the small pokey bits, she returned to the kitchen and tossed it out. She brushed off her hands on her black slacks, then stared out the window.

Granted, she and Angel weren’t exactly girlfriend and boyfriend anymore— Had they  _ever_  been girlfriend and boyfriend, though? Really? Whatever. Point was, Angel didn’t owe her anything. Not a response to her invite to Oz’s gig. Not info on whatever was going on in his life. Not even a simple, little “Merry Christmas.”

Well.

Buffy continued to be annoyed by that last one. “Merry Christmas” was such a  _tiny_  little thing. So tiny that she kinda expected it from everyone: Giles, Xander… Cordelia… hell, even  _Larry_  had wished her one right after the final bell last Friday. So yeah, she expected it from everyone except, like, Willow for obvious reasons. But that just made her point stronger because Willow had wished her a Merry Christmas too and the more Buffy thought about it, the more it didn’t seem like  _that_  big a deal to ask Angel to take time out of his brooding schedule to utter four syllables—just four—and let her know that he still cared about her at least as a friend if not—

“Buffy?”

Buffy jumped as her mom entered the kitchen. “Yeah?” she said, hoping her voice was calm. “What is it?”

“Nothing, just… is everything okay?”

Buffy plastered a smile across her face. “Peachy with a side of keen.”

Joyce smiled softly back. Moving around the center island, she looped an arm around her daughter’s shoulder and looked out the window as well. There was nothing to look at really. No soothing snow like in all the movies. Nothing but the dark stillness of their yard, turning to black the further it went from the house. But there was something soothing about it nonetheless.

“I wanted to thank you, Buffy.”

“Huh?” She whirled, facing her mother. “For what?”

“For this. For trusting me.” At her daughter’s unfading confusion, she sighed. “I know it’s been rough, and that we both— And that  _I_  wasn’t as accepting as I should’ve been at first, but I’m thankful you told me you were the Slayer and that I can do my best to help you with that part of your life now, no matter how small. It means so much that you don’t feel like you need to hide yourself from me anymore.”

“Geez, Mom…” Buffy said, her cheeks flushing. “Feel like you kind of screwed up the holidays with that one. Isn’t that more of a typical Thanksgiving speech?”

“I mean it.” Her mom gave Buffy a tight squeeze. “Whatever support you need… As long as it’s something I can give, I’ll give it.”

Buffy turned. Tears were brimming in her mother’s eyes, and Buffy could feel them starting to water her own. It was the little support boost Buffy hadn’t even realized she’d needed until now.

“Thanks, Mom,” Buffy said, squeezing her back.

They stayed like that a bit longer, arms wrapped around each other, and then her mom returned to living room to check on Faith.

Buffy remained at the window.

She crossed her arms and felt fabric slide over fabric. Despite the winter heatwave, she was wearing a white cardigan over her red blouse. Buffy missed not having to wear cardigans and sweaters and jackets. She missed not being afraid of not wearing them. And while it was easy to blame Spike for that fear—after all, she blamed him for almost everything else these days—she knew, deep down, that it’d started long before he’d spilled his identity in the Magic Box. Knew it when she’d first returned to Sunnydale from LA and Willow and Xander had stared at her like she was crazy for wearing long sleeves in the middle of a ninety plus degree day…

Buffy rolled up her sleeves and exposed the blank skin.

Nothing today, just like there’d been nothing yesterday. If she hadn’t known better, she would’ve assumed Spike was giving her a Christmas break from himself. Normally, she would’ve jumped for joy, but her brain was still stuck on stupid Angel and his stupid angst and his stupid reluctance to even wish—

An idea hit her.

It was a stupid idea, but Buffy didn’t care. Right now she felt like being petty and vindictive and making bad decisions, and if  _Angel_  wouldn’t say the words…

Reaching for the gel pen that’d remade its home in her jean pocket over the past couple weeks, Buffy drew a hangman’s noose on her arm and made two lines of spaces—five on the top and nine on the bottom.

“Yo, B!” Faith shouted. “Get in here! I want to open presents!”

Buffy jumped, shielding her arms behind herself, but it was fine. She was still alone in the kitchen. With one final look at her arm—wasn’t too late yet; she could still rub it off—Buffy capped her pen and recovered her arms. Entering the living room, she put on a smile that wasn’t hard to fake as Faith grinned back at her, holding up a small box beside her ear like some model in a late-night infomercial. Her mom must’ve shared with her their family tradition of opening one present early on Christmas Eve.

After a bit of fretful indecision, the three of them each had a gift. They took their seats and began unwrapping. Buffy ended up with a new pair of earrings, her mom with a handmade bookmark that had a purple flower cross-stitched across the front (“Told you it was crap…” “Don’t say that, Faith! It’s beautiful!”), and Faith with a mason jar of peppermint-flavored cocoa mix.

“Thanks, Mrs. S,” Faith said. “I mean, I don’t really know  _how_  to make cocoa but it’s really…”

Her mom gasped and suddenly they were all in the kitchen for an impromptu hot cocoa making lesson that took up the next half hour. Soon after that, the AC was cranked and they were all snuggled under thin blankets and sipping from hot mugs, sharing stories of years gone by. As her mom cheerfully recounted the time that a young Buffy had smeared cranberry sauce all over her Aunt Arlene’s dining room walls, Buffy watched Faith’s face. Her fellow slayer was entranced by the silly story. Warmth spread out over her features, a loosening of her guard that Buffy couldn’t remember ever seeing before, and despite the initial hesitations she’d had, Buffy silently admitted that her mom had made the right call in inviting the girl over…

Buffy just hoped some of Faith’s rougher, stab-first-ask-questions-later edges would stay rubbed off when they finally returned to school. Because this side of Faith? It was kinda… nice.

It wasn’t until the three had let their increasingly constant yawns call it a night, and Buffy had dragged herself up to bed and peeled her sweater off that she saw her arm again. Her puzzle had been filled out, Spike apparently bypassing the whole “guessing” part of the game:

_m  e r r y_

_c  h r i s t m a s_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, everyone! Hope you guys enjoy this bit of Christmas fluff + mini chapter dump.


	8. Do as I Say and Not as I Do

**January 1999**

Buffy swayed in time to the music of the Dingos, letting the week’s stress wash off her in waves. Giles’ recent meditation exercises didn’t hold a candle to the constant, rhythmic pulse.

She ignored Faith dancing nearby with—well, less dancing with and more grinding against—some random guy, college-aged from the looks of it. Buffy wrinkled her nose. Although… the Scoobies were all seniors now, practically college-aged themselves, so Buffy guessed it wasn’t as morally scandalous as she kinda wanted it to be. Still, just because Faith could do it, didn’t mean Buffy wanted to. She was totally chill in her own little calming bubble, rocking her hips back and forth as Willow kept her company, matching her movements while occasionally throwing a grin and a wave towards Oz who was rocking out up front. They didn’t have to worry about picking up guys, didn’t have to worry about looking cool, didn’t have to anything. It was so relaxing that Buffy barely registered the familiar tingles when they brushed against her subconsciousness.

Her eyes slipped open and caught an all-too-familiar shock of white hair from across the darkened club. A swirl of black leather disappeared past a clump of bodies, heading towards one of the exits.

A giggling girl in a red dress followed.

“Buffy? What’s wrong?”

Buffy had stilled so suddenly that apparently even Willow had noticed.

“Nothing,” she said. “Wait here.”

Willow’s eyes widened. “Is it a vampire? Want me to grab Faith?”

They both shot a look at the other slayer, oblivious to everything except the jean-covered crotch of her latest partner.

“Just wait here,” Buffy repeated. Her grip tightened around the stake in her belt loop. “This won’t take long.”

She stalked through the crowd after her prey, telling herself that the anger rising in her was just that. Anger. Totally normal Slayer anger towards a disgusting undead creature who was about to snack on a defenseless human. Because it sure as hell wasn’t betrayal. Betrayal required one person to have actually had faith in the other, to have believed that there was even a possibility of good let alone— And there wasn’t a possibility. Because Spike was a vampire. And just because this was the first time Buffy had seen him since Christmas—no, since that night in her basement, she shouldn’t have expected him to be anything but a murderer. A murdering murderer who murdered people.

She had a murderer for a soulmate.

So what did that make her?

Buffy kicked her head quiet as she slammed open the back alley door. She had a girl to save and a vampire to stake, soulmates be damned.

Literally.

Luckily for her, the pair had chosen to stick around; Buffy didn’t know whether that was intentional or unintentional stupidity on Spike’s part. He had the girl in the red dress up against the wall of the alley, mouth pressed over her (judging by the occasional breathy moan escaping her lips) still unbitten neck.

Buffy cleared her throat.

The two ignored her. The girl clutched the back of Spike’s neck. As her hand ran up through his hair, Spike’s hips pressed forward just a bit more…

Buffy felt her cheeks burn as she rolled her eyes. She felt the urge to stake him right then and there against the wall, but nope, couldn’t do that and risk the human. Risk the girl so brainless about strangers after dark that she must’ve only survived this long on the Hellmouth through sheer dumb luck alone.

“Spike!” Buffy finally snapped.

It was the girl who reacted, lifting her head past Spike’s shoulder to glare at Buffy. Actually glare at her. “Who are you?” she demanded.

Buffy sighed. She didn’t have the patience for this. “The girl who’s about to let you live to skank up another day.”

The girl’s mouth gaped open in confusion, Buffy’s insult taking a couple seconds to penetrate, and then she shoved Spike off. “What the fuck? Is she your girlfriend or something?”

Spike let out a beleaguered sigh as he leaned back against wall and lit up a cigarette. “Or somethin’, I’m afraid.”

“Ugh!” The girl readjusted her dress and stomped away.

Buffy watched her go for a moment and then—remembering her current company—whirled back around, ready to defend against any sudden lunges. But Spike remained unmoving against the wall, seemingly more interested in his cigarette than the imminent Slayer attack.

“Where have you been?” Buffy demanded, not lowering her guard.

Spike shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Hmm… let’s see.” She crossed her arms and tapped her chin in feigned contemplation. “Seeing as it’s you, and there’re probably dead bodies involved, I’m leaning towards… yeah. Just a bit.” When he didn’t immediately respond, Buffy changed tactics. “This your first night back at the Bronze?” she challenged. “You been avoiding me? Scared that I’d wipe the floor with you?”

He took a slow drag of his cigarette. “Been here a couple times this month,” he said carelessly. “Must’ve just missed each other.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes. Her in-person interrogation seemed to be going just as well as her written ones had.

“Why did you tell her that?” she finally asked, giving up on Spike’s plotting for the moment.

“Why’d I tell who what?”

Buffy shifted her weight. She hate, hate, hated having to spell it out for him but... “I’m not your girlfriend.”

Spike looked at her, his eyebrows raising. “Never said you were.”

“Yes, you—” She took a deep breath. So much for the super quick dust-it-and-bust-it plan she’d promised Willow. “You implied it.”

“I implied we had a connection.” Spike briefly tilted his head up, exhaling smoke into the night sky, and then held up his right arm. “Which we do.”

“What we have isn’t a connection. It’s a joke.”

Spike’s eyes darkened. His arm dropped. “No joke, Slayer.”

Buffy steeled herself. “That girl you were just with. Were you about to kill her?”

Spike threw his cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of his boot. “S’bout to feed,” he said. “Didn’t quite care one way or another ‘bout what happened to the body afterwards.”

Buffy knew he was intentionally pushing her buttons now, but she didn’t care. She flipped her stake up, caught it again, and attacked. Spike reacted instantly, moving from casual lounge to fluid dodge as her stake hit the alley wall. His fist flew towards her face. Buffy ducked and swept out a leg that he easily jumped over. Back and forth they went, the only noise their own labored breaths; the occasional thud of limb against limb, blocking a direct hit; unrestrained laughter as Spike shook off a hard blow to his face… It was so different from the slow, lazy dance she’d shared with Willow inside, but it was a dance nonetheless.

And then the world tilted.

Buffy went woozy. The next thing she knew, she was on her back and everything else was spinning above her. Weight pressed against her a second later—a hand splayed against her chest, holding her down. As Spike’s fangs descended towards her neck, another shape suddenly coalesced behind him, all dark hair and cherry lips...

And a stake, driving towards his back.

Buffy regained control over her body and slammed a knee into his side. The blow knocked him just enough to the side that Faith’s stake missed his heart and punctured his lung instead. Spike roared in pain. He lurched off Buffy, stumbling away as he took stock of new situation and the appearance of a second slayer, and then fled.

Unusually exhausted, Buffy collapsed back against the alley concrete.

“What the hell, B?” Faith demanded. “I had him!”

Buffy was confused herself. Her head was still spinning. “I didn’t see you,” she lied.

“If you say so. Guess I should just be glad that you’re alright.” Faith held out a hand and dragged Buffy up, who staggered, the ground refusing to stay entirely level. “Woah… You okay?”

“Yeah, I…” Buffy paused as the world finally straightened and cleared. She shook her head, half-daring the wooziness to come back. “Just dizzy for a moment… Maybe I’m coming down with a cold?”

“Shit. You should know better than to take on vamps like that when you’re sick. Why didn’t you grab me?”

Buffy’s head went blank. There was no way to tell the truth without insulting Faith and her overly-skanky flirting habits. “He was my kill,” she said instead. Lamely.

Faith stared at her fellow slayer for a long moment and then scoffed in disbelief. “Sorry. I wasn’t aware this was a game of ‘my vampire, your vampire.’ Although I’ll try to remember that next time. You know, hang back and break out the popcorn as you get your throat chomped.”

Buffy felt an automatic retort rise up, but forced herself to drop it. She lifted a hand and felt her forehead. Despite her excuse to Faith, she didn’t feel sick… but that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible… Buffy shook aside her thoughts. Faith was still muttering things, but Buffy chose to ignore them as they both re-entered the Bronze. As long as she got a good night’s sleep tonight, everything would be better in the morning.

* * *

Everything was so, so not better in the morning.

Buffy twirled a stake, wincing as it dropped out of her hand every third spin, as Giles rambled on and on about possible colds and taking it easy and ‘waiting and seeing’ whether or not her powers came back. And, sure, maybe that was a totally a-okay plan for Mr. Sits-In-A-Library-Office, but Buffy wasn’t sure how she’d explain ‘waiting and seeing’ to the vampires of Sunnydale.

Or their prey.

“What about an artifact?” Buffy finally asked him after school. She’d waited all day and her powers were still non-existent. “Like an anti-slayer artifact of some kind?”

“Buffy…” Giles said. He frowned beside her at where the rest of the Scoobies and Faith had taken up residence at the library’s central tables, research books stacked up high between them.

“It could exist. And if it did, I bet vampires would kill to have it.” Buffy paused. “Well, kill more than they already do.”

“Buffy, none of my books have ever said anything about—”

“Then check them again!” Buffy snapped, slamming a fist down onto the table. Despite making the others jump, all the noise did to Buffy was remind her that it was just that—noise. Any other day, the wooden surface would’ve been left cracked in two.

Giles took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “I understand your concern,” he said. “But as your Watcher, I can assure you that there’s nothing to be overly alarmed about. I’m sure other Slayers have faced… err… irregularities like this in the past.”

“This is more than an irregularity, it—” Buffy took a deep breath. “It started last night when I was fighting Spike. He’s gotta have something to do with this. I just know it!”

Willow’s head perked up. “You saw Spike?”

“Wait, that was Spike?” Faith said. “Why didn’t you tell me, B?”

Xander snorted. “Like you need a name tag to pick Captain Peroxide out from the crowd.”

“Buffy,” Willow said. “Did he tell you where he’s been? How he broke free?”

“No, I tried, but—” Buffy frowned. She  _had_  tried, but she hadn’t tried very hard. Her nose crinkled. There was a lot she was starting to regret about their encounter.

“Shit…” Faith murmured, staring off into space. “Slayer of Slayers almost had his third kill.”

Giles stiffened. “What? Buffy, did he—?” He suddenly frowned, eyes narrowing. “What happened to your arm?”

Buffy flinched as she realized she’d started to hold it unconsciously. “Nothing!” she said quickly. “I- I need to use the bathroom for a minute. I’ll be right back!”

Practically fleeing to the nearest girl’s room, Buffy locked herself into a stall and sat down on the toilet. Then she began to take deep, calming breaths. It took about forty-five of them to finally start kicking in. Once her body had finally re-stabilizing itself, Buffy yanked down her sleeves and grabbed out her pen.

 _What did you do?_ she wrote.

She stared daggers into her skin, as though that’d speed up Spike’s response. It took far too long—at least longer than she was used to—for his words to appear:

_gonna have to be more specific than that, pet_

Buffy’s pen was already back on her skin, ready to accuse him of dodging the question, when she froze. Despite her suspicions, there was a small chance that Spike  _wasn’t_ behind her sudden power loss. If so, blabbing to him about it would be an open invitation to 1999’s greatest vampire party game: Attack the Defenseless Slayer. A game that, given last night’s close call, Spike would totally be up for playing…

And why wouldn’t he?

He was a vampire. He was genetically programmed to kill her.

Buffy groaned as she ran her hands through her hair. If only Spike was a normal soulmate... Someone she could confide in…

The horrible irony hit Buffy with a gut-wrenching twist. A short laugh bubbled out of her throat. The whole reason she needed someone normal to confide in right now was because she’d become a normal girl. Everything she’d always claimed she ever wanted.

 _slayer,_  Spike wrote, apparently getting impatience at her silence.  _what’s going on?_

Buffy capped her pen and recovered her arms.

* * *

“Someone said they saw you tussling in a back alley with a little blonde birdie Sunday night.”

Spike kept his eyes on his book, focusing on black word after black word as he suppressed the urge to growl. It’d been two nights since his encounter with the Slayer and he was already itching for another round. He’d gotten so close that his dreams were all too eager to fill in the details that never were, letting his fangs make that final inch, piercing through her golden, delicious skin…

As if on cue, his chest throbbed with a deep, radiating sting.

Spike shifted, ignoring the pain. The other slayer’s missed blow hadn’t fully healed yet, but the Mayor didn’t need to know that. Bloody git had enough to be smug about. “What,” Spike finally said, flipping to the next page—there wasn’t much else to do in the barebones room that the Mayor had provided him. “You really thought I’d keep sittin’ on my arse like a good little boy? Wait until you blew your dog whistle ‘fore I snapped after the Slayer?”

“Spike, Spike, Spike…” the Mayor said, looking genuinely distraught. “How could you think such terrible things? We’re partners in this. Remember?”

“Partners. Right.” Spike snorted. “Partners where one’s doin’ all the orderin’ and the other’s doin’ the obeyin’.”

The Mayor crossed the room and plopped himself down atop Spike’s reading table. Spike glared up at him.

“Now, Spike. I have not once given you an order. I’ve merely  _advised_ that, given the current situation here in Sunnydale, a little waiting and planning might be towards our mutual advantage.”

This time a growl did escape his lips. “I’ve been  _waitin’_  for weeks,” he said, snapping his book shut. “Can’t blame a man for lettin’ off a little steam.”

The Mayor smiled. “And how’d that go?”

“I had her!” Spike snarled. At the Mayor’s blank, incredulous expression, he was forced to amend: “I mean, I  _would’ve_  had her…” Spike muttered, only half-caring how petulant that made him sound. “If not for Little Miss Darkside of the Slayer Force. Impossible to get her alone these days. Either of them.” He shook his head. “You know, it’s supposed to be  _one_ girl in all the world. One! Rather key part of the whole bloody package.”

“That’s why you have me,” the Mayor said. He plucked Spike’s book out of his unresisting hands, glanced at the title—Carrie—and made a small tutting noise in the back of his throat. “Bit messy for my taste, all that pig’s blood, but… What was I saying? Oh, yes. The two slayer problem. Don’t you worry; I have men working on how to permanently crack that particular nut. But for now…” Spike raised an eyebrow as the Mayor reached into a suit pocket. “You want the Slayer—the  _original_  Slayer—alone, go to this address.”

He passed over an unmarked envelope. Spike ripped it open and withdrew a single folded piece of paper. The only thing on it was the aforementioned address. One he didn’t recognize.

Spike held it up between his fingers. “And I should do this… why?”

“Like I said. You want the Slayer alone? Well, she’s currently there. Alone.”

Spike narrowed his eyes as he tried to suss out what the Mayor was planning. He wasn’t as terrible as Angelus—though that was an impossibly high bar, that one—but that didn’t mean his poker face wasn’t still infuriating. Whatever emotions he was hiding… well, Spike was starting to doubt that the man even had emotions  _to_  hide.

Finally, after a silent stand-still, Spike shoved the address into his duster pocket, pushed himself up from the reading chair, and—ignoring the sting in his lungs—stalked out of the room. He’d just about had it with whatever this ‘partnership’ was supposed to be, but if the Slayer was somewhere and something was happening, he sure as hell wasn’t gonna miss the party.

* * *

Buffy and her mother clung to each other in the basement of the Council’s condemned house. They breathed in sync and felt the deep thrum of one another’s heartbeats—a steady reassurance that, yes, they were both still alive. As the adrenaline from the earlier fight slowly wore off, Buffy’s limbs began to tremble. Her legs didn’t feel like they had the muscles to support her anymore. Without her Slayer strength, her body was too tired. Too vulnerable. Shadows still lingered everywhere she looked, and—after a night of betrayals—Buffy just wanted to go home already and bury herself beneath her blankets. Maybe even her mom’s blankets. Just because.

As Buffy tightened her grip across her mom’s back, there was a creak from upstairs.

They both froze.

A pit dropped in Buffy’s stomach. She’d been assuming this entire time that there’d only been the one vampire—Giles had  _told_  her there was only one vampire… but it wouldn’t be the first time her Watcher had lied to her tonight.

“Mom, wait here.”

Buffy picked up a piece of a broken wood from the floor. Splintery perhaps, but good enough for a staking.

“Buffy, you can’t—”

“ _Wait_.”

Buffy stared down her mom until the woman finally nodded, and then slowly climbed the stairs. She kept her stake clutched tightly in front of her. It was a desperate grip. Probably a useless grip. Probably looked like Xander or Willow’s useless grips whenever they tip-toed through one of Sunnydale’s graveyards, crosses shaking in front of their chests. One good vampiric lunge was all it’d take to disarm—

No. She wasn’t going to think that way. She’d already dusted one vampire tonight. She could hold an encore performance if she needed to.

As Buffy approached the top landing, she instinctively tried to reach out with her tinglies. Nothing. The council’s serum was still pumping strong through her veins. Her eyes were also giving her nothing. The shadows stretched out along the length of the decrepit corridor. They seemed blacker than normal. Unpierceable. Buffy wondered if it was just this house that made everything look darker, or if her super Slayer abilities included some sort of enhanced night vision that she’d always taken for granted until now.

A low growl echoed down the corridor.

Buffy barely had time to turn before she was pinned against the wall, stake knocked from her hand.

“Slayer.”

The voice was unmistakable.

Spike.

Oh God. The Slayer of Slayers had found her like this.

Exhausted. Defenseless.

Buffy’s mind wiped blank, and her eyes squeezed shut as she braced for the inevitable.

And then the pressure lifted. “Slayer?” Spike repeated. He sniffed, then pulled back slightly, yellow eyes meeting hers. “What’s wrong?”

Buffy felt her face suddenly burn in pure shame and embarrassment. She was supposed to be dying at the hands of her mortal enemy right now, and every second he delayed his attack was one more second she got to be reminded of how far she’d fallen.

Spike poked her shoulder. “Hey, I asked—”

“Just get it over with!” Buffy snapped.

Spike’s head tilted to the side in obvious confusion.

Buffy trembled, cheeks flushing hotter and hotter. He was taking pity on her. She was currently so helpless and pathetic that the soulless vampire was taking pity on her. She glanced around, desperate for anything to get her out of this situation. Her makeshift stake was on the floor, but her ordinary human reflexes would never let her reach it before his vampire ones did. Repeating Kralik’s holy water trick would’ve been nice, but Spike didn’t take medication. Also she was out of holy water. She supposed she  _could_  try the whole “what’s that over there!” classic… Spike was stupid enough that he just might fall for it.

A sudden war cry split the air.

Vampire and Slayer both turned as a shape rushed towards them from the shadows, a jagged piece of wood raised high over its head. Keeping his grip on Buffy, Spike disarmed the attacker with one movement and sent them stumbling sideways with another. He stared into the darkness for a moment, and then slipped out of game face.

“Joyce?” Spike said.

The shape turned. It was indeed her mother.

“Spike?” she said, relaxing slightly.

But only slightly.

Spike followed her gaze back to Buffy—still pinned against the wall—and quickly let go. He scratched his neck as Buffy rubbed feeling back into hers. “Hullo. Wasn’t expectin’ to see you here.”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly planned. Kidnapped, actually.”

“Kidnapped?! Who’d do such a thing?”

“Umm… I didn’t actually get his name. Buffy took care of him though.”

Spike nodded. “Quite right.”

“Yes…”

At that, they both seemed to remember who and where they were. They stood awkwardly, the occasional creak of the house filling the silence.

“What are  _you_ doing here?” her mom finally asked.

“Huh? Who, me?” He pointed at himself. “Oh, I was just… that is— I was just passin’ through.” He said it as though it were obvious, gesturing vaguely behind him at a broken grandfather clock before shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Right,” her mom said, clearly skeptical. “Well, Buffy and I should probably get going home.”

“Right,” Spike repeated.

“Buffy?”

Buffy felt a hand wrap around her arm and pull her forward from where she suddenly realized she’d been standing in a daze. “Huh?” she said. The world started to clear itself, but it still wasn’t making sense though. Spike was a vampire. An unchained vampire pitted against a defenseless Slayer. He should’ve ripped her throat out, should  _be_  ripping her throat out… it was so obvious that Buffy almost told him that, but luckily her ancestral monkey survival instincts stopped her just in time.

As she and her mom neared the foyer, she risked a glance back over shoulder. Spike remained where they’d left him, scuffing one boot against the old floor boards.

Buffy shook her head of its clinging wigginess and let her mom finish steering her out of the house.

* * *

Later that night, or maybe it’d already passed into morning—long after her mom had gone to bed anyways—Buffy sat awake in her room. Both of her bare arms lay before her, as they’d had for the past half hour. Finally she took her pen and wrote.

_Why didn’t you kill me?_

She counted the seconds on her clock until he responded. Thirty-seven.

There was a small pause.

 _wasn’t right,_ he finally wrote.

Buffy scrunched her face.  _What does that_ _mean_ _?_

That was followed by an even longer pause.

_no fun in it_

_Fun?_

_well, that and you were drugged up, right? blood doesn’t taste good when there’s a cocktail of chemicals in it_

Buffy felt herself exhale a sigh of relief. Of  _cours_ e there’d be a logical vampire explanation for sparing her, disgusting as it was.

 _of course_ , he added,  _suppose it depends on the type of drugs. i ever tell you about the time i ate a hippie at woodstock?_

“Ugh…” Buffy muttered, wrinkling her nose.  _You’re revolting._

 _i aim to please,_  he wrote.  _also i_ _am_ _going to kill you. you got that in your thick skull, right?_

 _Not if I kill you first,_  Buffy replied with an annoyed roll of her eyes.

She tugged her pajama sleeves down before she could get sucked in by his next taunt. Chest suddenly feeling lighter by the way everything in that part of her life had gone back to normal, Buffy clicked off her light and went to bed.


	9. You Belong to You

**February 1999**

“Valentine’s delivery for a Miss Summers,” the delivery man intoned dully.

Buffy blinked at the giant bouquet of pink and red roses beneath the porch light, trying to figure out who’d—

The delivery man looked at his clipboard again. “Whoops. Sorry. For a  _Missus_  Summers.”

Oh.

Buffy blankly signed the delivery slip and slipped back inside.

“Oh,  _Buffy_ ,” her mom called from the living room couch. “Those are absolutely lovely. Who—?”

“They’re for you,” Buffy said. She tried to not outright shove them into her mother’s face. And failed.

Luckily her mom didn’t pick up on the aggression. She checked the tag and blushed. “Oh, Bob shouldn’t have…”

“Bob?”

“The delivery man at the gallery. Comes by every Wednesday.”

“Right…” Buffy said. She lingered by her mom, eyeing the bouquet suspiciously. “And you’re positive that Bob’s an actual  _man_  this time, right?”

Her mom sighed. “He’s not a robot if that’s what you’re hinting at, young lady. Unless robots get paper cuts these days.”

“Paper cut?”

“Well, cardboard cut, technically. And I… well, I helped him with the bandaids.”

Buffy stared at her mom, impressed. “Way to go, Mom the Flirty Florence Nightingale.”

Her mom ducked her face behind her bouquet as her cheeks lit up a light pink. “Perhaps…” She lifted her head with a somewhat more confident smile. “Now are you going to help me fill up a vase or what?”

Recognizing the request as a not-so-thinly-veiled command, Buffy went to the kitchen. She’d picked out a dark green vase with white spots and had it halfway filled when she felt the tinglies.

Her head snapped up.

There was a vampire in the backyard.

Switching out the vase for a wooden spoon, Buffy stalked her way to the backdoor and flung it open, ready to strike—

In the center of her backyard stood Angel.

Alone.

He stared at her from the edge of the shadows but made no move to approach.

Buffy bit her lip. It’d been forever since Angel had last given her the time of day—or night, whatever—and part of her wanted nothing more than to slam the porch door straight back in his face, leave him to brood in the dark, but… Buffy glanced back towards the rest of the main house. She probably had a minute or two before her mom started wondering what was taking so long. That’d have to be enough.

Still gripping the spoon, albeit loosely, Buffy approached him.

“Angel,” she said.

“Buffy.”

His shoulders were hunched, his eyes avoiding hers. She took a deep breath and waited for him to say more. He didn’t.

“Angel,” she finally said, giving up. “Why are you here?”

He sighed. “I… I wanted to apologize.”

“Apologize for what.”

“Me. You. Everything,” he said. “I want…” He finally looked up. “I want you to give me— give  _us_  another chance.”

Buffy stared at him shellshocked. His words ripped a bandage from her chest, everything that’d been slowly scabbing over suddenly raw and seeping with hope again. She closed her eyes and tried to take a moment to compose herself.

“Can we not do this out here?” she heard herself say, her eyes still closed.

“What?”

“This.” Buffy gestured weakly between the two of them before glancing back at the porch light, warm and welcoming. “You can come in. I can get us some tea or hot cocoa, or anything… and then we can sit down and talk?” She gave him a smile that he didn’t return.

Angel shifted his weight as he cast a dark a look her house. “I don’t want to make your mom uncomfortable.”

Buffy’s thoughts instantly leapt to her mom and Spike—her walloping the other vampire in the head with a fire extinguisher; her chatting with him, a soulless killer, unsupervised in their kitchen; her matter-of-factly dragging Buffy from the Cruciamentum house after being a terrified captive of it not even minutes before… “Oh, you don’t have to worry about Mom,” Buffy said, already stepping back towards the house. “She’ll be—”

“No.”

Buffy stopped. The sharp tone in his voice surprised her. Irritated her a little. But still… This was Angel. Inside or outside, she’d at least hear him out.

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “Why now?”

“What do you mean why now?”

“What do I—? Angel it’s been  _two months_  since you—” Ugh, she couldn’t even say ‘dumped me’ since they’d never officially gotten back together. “Since you talked to me,” she was forced to say instead. “Since you anything’ed! And I thought you wanted me gone so I’ve been working real hard on the gone-ness, but now you what? Just expect me to drop everything and rush back to you?”

“Buffy, no! That’s not—!” He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. Buffy squirmed against him but he held tight, stroking her back until she relaxed against him. “That’s not what I wanted at all. This whole time, I’ve wanted nothing more to be with you—would’ve killed to be with you, but…”

Buffy stared at the darkened backyard beyond Angel’s shoulder. “But Spike?” she guessed numbly.

Angel tightened his grip around her. “You don’t have to say his name.”

Buffy stiffened before pushing him away. “It’s not about me  _having_  to say it or not. He’s still there.” She repressed a shudder. “He’s always going to be there.”

It was the first time she’d admitted it out loud.

“I know,” Angel said tersely. “But that doesn’t mean…” His jaw locked. “You can ignore him. Like I ignored Darla after I got my soul.” He reached out, hands cradling Buffy’s face until she was forced to look at him. “His connection to you,” he said. “It’s not  _his_  connection. It’s William’s—the human William’s. The demon stole it like it stole everything else and wants to use it against you.”

Buffy’s skin began to prickle and she tried to pull away, but Angel held fast. She could feel tears threatening to burn. She willed them to stay back.

The demon stealing the connection, she could agree with that. But using it against her? She’d used their connection more than Spike ever had. All through all elementary and middle school, she’d sent him arm-long monologues about the awesomeness of Mr. Gordo, demanded endless tic-tac-toe games on boring bus rides, secured his help with… well, not  _cheating_ , exactly, more like ‘in-class assistance’ with tests.

Not once—not until Angelus, Buffy suddenly realized—had it ever been used against her.

“Buffy?” Angel said.

Buffy jolted out of her thoughts. “Sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. She was being silly now. True, Spike hadn’t abused their connection growing up, but all of that had happened  _before_  he’d realized she was the Slayer. She couldn’t trust that the vampire wasn’t waiting for the perfect moment to betray her in the future. After all, he was still hanging around in Sunnydale, which was proof right there that he was planning something. Probably. “It’s just a lot to deal with and…”

Angel kissed her on the forehead. “It’s okay.”

Buffy briefly closed her eyes. Nodding her agreement, she pulled away, and this time Angel let her.

“Can I just have time to think about it? Us, I mean.”

“Buffy…”

“ _Please._ ”

Angel looked pained—she hated that look; the way it pierced straight through her, weakening her resolve—but then he finally nodded. “Take however long you need.”

* * *

The two fledglings almost caught them by surprise. Almost. Buffy and Faith easily split them up, one versus one, and began to whirl, kick, and punch them into submission. Buffy’s vampire had dark brown hair and muscular build, and in the darkness, it was easy to imagine a broad forehead to complete the look. She didn’t pull her punches, reveling in each blow that landed, and as she lunged forward and finally plunged her stake into his chest, she snarled. Actually snarled. Battle lust continued to pound through her as he exploded into dust around her.

And it still wasn’t enough.

“Damn, B,” Faith said. “Who pissed in  _your_  cheerios this morning?” She’d beaten Buffy in dispatching her vamp and was sitting atop a headstone, flipping her stake.

“Nothing. No one.”

Faith raised an eyebrow. After a few moments, she shrugged. “Fine. Whatever.” She slipped off the headstone and began to casually strut away.

Buffy stared after her.

“How do you do it?” she asked before she could stop herself.

Faith turned around. “Do what?”

“Not care.”

Faith stared, eyes seeming even wider through rings of black liner, and then burst out laughing. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Miss Prissy Pants finally got worn down by all that unneeded responsibility, huh? Rolling over and obeying the Watchers’ every single beck and call?”

Buffy blinked in confusion before remembering the arrival of the new Watcher. He was roughly their age but somehow stuffier than Giles and Gwendolyn Post had been  _combined_.

“It’s not that,” Buffy quickly said, although she  _was_  still mad about the whole involuntarily drugging thing. “It’s…” Her thoughts drifted back to Angel, to the way he could twist her certainties back into maybes and, with just one word, reel her heart back towards his… “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“ _Sure_  you don’t,” Faith said with a knowing smile. When Buffy glared at her, she simply shrugged. “I’m not the one who brought it up, that’s all.”

“Look it doesn’t matter why I’m feeling—well, what I feel,” Buffy snapped. “I don’t want to feel it, so do you have tips or not?”

Faith put her free hand on her hip, considering for a bit. “Sure,” she finally said. “There’s just one simple lesson you need to learn, B. Do that and it’ll solve  _all_  your problems.” She strode up to Buffy, stopped, and then poked her hard in the chest: “You belong to you.”

“What?”

“I’ve been watching you for months now. You wanna know why you’re feeling like you do? Your spine pretty much snaps backwards the second anyone asks you  _anything_. You give yourself away until there’s nothing left.”

“That’s not—!” Buffy shrunk back, resisting the urge to shout back childish denials. “I mean, it’s not like that. Everyone helps me out just as much as I help them.”

Faith lifted her arms and looked around the cemetery. “Then where are they now?”

Buffy frowned as, one by one, excuses scuttled to the front of her head before scattering again. Willow was studying for an upcoming test, which was important, but Buffy had that same test and kinda deserved to study too. Xander was… somewhere. Probably home. As for Giles and the new Watcher, they were at the school library, all comfy and warm, doing ‘research’ and waiting for the two Slayers to report back.

“Exactly,” Faith said, smiling again. “Because that’s the secret. The way they control you. They make you think that they’re important in the grand scheme of things when they’re not. It’s just you and me, baby. We have power. They don’t.”

“Faith, I know you’re trying to help, but I’m not sure how any of this—”

“You want to start feeling better? Follow me.”

Faith started heading north. Buffy remained rooted in place.

“But school’s that way,” she said, pointing in the opposite direction.

Faith turned in one fluid movement and kept walking backwards with a wide cherry-glossed grin. “You think?”

Buffy continued staring. The last thing she needed was Giles’ disapprove-y face disapproving at her first thing tomorrow morning, but Faith…

Faith needed someone to follow her and make sure she didn’t get herself—or anyone else—into trouble. Doing anything less would be irresponsible. And with that mantra repeating itself in her head, Buffy took a deep breath and chased after her.

* * *

“And then Faith pulled me onto the dance floor, and— Oh god, you can’t imagine how  _great_  it felt,” Buffy told Willow. The two stood by their lockers, collecting their things for first period. “It was just me and the music and I was just dancing and not caring about Angel or the council or Principal Snyder or school— or anything!”

“That’s great, Buffy…” Willow said with a strained smile. “But going all Ferris Bueller isn’t a be-all-end-all solution to life. Sooner or later, you’ve gotta come back to school. Literally.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Giles said.

Buffy flinched, then turned slowly, fighting down the queasiness that automatically rose in her stomach. Giles’ face was stiff, his mouth set in a firm line. Yep. Definitely  _radiating_ the disapproval this morning. Buffy fought her best to mimic his expression.

“I  _was_  going to ask just where on Earth you were last night,” he said, “but unfortunately your conversation with Willow has just enlightened me.”

“Great,” Buffy muttered. “I guess I can add ‘eavesdropping’ to your list of crimes then.”

She tried to move around him, but Giles blocked her.

“Buffy, this is serious. Wesley and I were both up until dawn with no idea what’d happened to you. We were beside ourselves with worry.”

Buffy ignored the splinter of guilt in her chest by seizing on the recent memory of betrayal instead. “Good.”

“Good?! Buffy, you can’t just—” He reached out, but Buffy dodged. “Buffy, if you don’t stop and listen to me—”

“What? You’ll drug me again?”

Giles went white.

The bell for first period rang. Buffy took advantage of the distraction and pushed past him. She was halfway down the hall by the time Willow caught up.

“Buffy, what’s wrong?”

“What? Nothing’s wrong!” She refused to slow her steps. “Just reminding Giles that he’s not all Mr. Flawless all the time. That’s all.”

“Sure. And I know you’re still mad with him about the stuff that happened on your birthday, but I thought that was getting better and…” They stopped at the door to Mr. Beach’s class and let their classmates file in before them. Willow lowered her head, gesturing for Buffy to lean in close. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Spike, does it?” she whispered.

Buffy jerked back. “What? No!” She paused. Okay, technically it  _did_  because her current drama with Angel stemmed from him basically just existing, but ugh. Not everything in her life had to trail back to Spike. “It’s… it’s because I don’t like how I’m being treated.”

“By Giles?”

“By everyone!”

Willow stared at her, confused. “Buffy. If I’ve done something wrong…”

Buffy nearly groaned. Here it was again. Willow’s quibbling lips were admittedly different from Angel’s pained puppy dog eyes, but the effect was the same.

“Look,” Buffy said. “I just need some space. And time to think.”

“Buffy…”

“Please.”

And now she was back to the begging. Why was she the one always begging the people around her for stuff? Faith was right. She was the Slayer. She shouldn’t have to beg.

The second bell interrupted them, echoing harshly in the now empty hallway. Willow jumped. If they didn’t rush inside now, they’d be marked as tardy—a fate that seemed to disturb Willow more than Buffy’s current emotional distress.

“Alright,” Willow said, already inching towards the door. “But if you need to talk…”

Buffy sighed. “I promise I’ll do.”

* * *

It was easy to follow Faith the second night. Buffy didn’t need to fool herself an excuse this time, having spent all day pissed off at Giles who wouldn’t apologize or even come anywhere near a halfway compromise with her. And so here she sat at the Bronze again, picking at her sweater and scanning the crowd for vamps until Faith finally returned from the bar with two glasses of pink something.

Buffy quickly grabbed one, took a deep slug, and then nearly spat it out. “What’s in here?”

“Uh… alcohol, of course.”

Buffy stared at her. Her head whipped back towards the bar, towards the bouncers lining the doors.

“Hey, hey!” Faith said. “Just… chill, okay? You belong to you. Remember?”

“Well, yeah, but this is illegal!”

“Ssh! Not so loud!” Faith took a quick glance around before sighing. “And sure, maybe it is, but I don’t see why that matters. We’re eighteen. The government’s all fine with us signing up for foreign slaughterhouses but not the stuff we put in our bodies? I say that’s bullshit, and I’m calling them on it.” She slammed her drink back, swallowing half of it down in a single gulp.

Buffy shifted on her chair. Technically,  _she_  was eighteen and Faith was still seventeen, but pointing that out didn’t seem like it’d accomplish much… Buffy eyed the drink in her hands. It looked all pink and fruity and innocent. Surely just one glass couldn’t hurt…

Copying Faith’s earlier moves, she braced herself and chugged until half the liquid was gone too. It tasted good,  _real_  good, but burned against her throat just a bit, and she had to place a hand lightly on her stomach to steady it. When her body finally equalized, she looked up to see Faith staring at her with narrowed eyes.

“What?” Buffy said.

“Nothing, just…” Faith pursed her lips. “Hundreds of sweaty bodies in here, making it sweatier, and here’s you with the long sleeves… tonight, last night, every night…” Faith reached across the table, but Buffy leaned away. Faith shook her head. “Hell, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were covering up that skin to hide a secret soulmate or something.”

Buffy hesitated a second too long.

Faith’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. You  _are_ , aren’t you?”

“Not so loud!” Buffy hissed, attempting to slap her hands over Faith’s mouth. She missed and nearly knocked over their drinks.

“Damn…” Faith whispered. “All this time and I never knew…” Her eyes flicked down to Buffy’s covered arms, then back up to her face. “Who knows?”

Buffy groaned. There was no way this conversation was going to end well, but— “Willow. And my mom. And Giles, kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“He knows I have one, but doesn’t know who it is.”

“Right.” Faith took a small sip of her drink. “And so that  _who_ is…?”

“No one you know,” Buffy quickly said, though not too quickly to be suspicious. She fiddled with her glass, rolling it between her palms. “Then again,  _I_ hardly know him…”

“Wait, what? How…?”

Buffy shrugged. “I stopped writing in high school.” That was a half truth, at least.

Faith stared at her. “You stopped—?  _Why_?”

“Well, it’s kinda obvious. Isn’t it?” When Faith didn’t say anything, Buffy sighed in exasperation. “Got called as Slayer. Didn’t want to put him in danger.”

Faith continued staring at her. “You’re a fucking idiot,” she finally said.

“What?”

“‘Didn’t want to put him in danger’?” Faith said, air-quoting Buffy’s words right back at her. “That’s the most bullshit thing I’ve ever heard. If I had true love handed to me on a silver platter, I’d fight for that with every scrap of pathetic skin I had left.”

Ugh. It was so  _not_  true love, but she didn’t want to get into that particular argument. “I thought you didn’t care about stuff like that,” Buffy said instead. “You don’t care about anyone.”

“Yeah…” Faith muttered. “‘cause no one ever cared about me.” She paused, and then let out a long groan. “ _Fuuuck_ , that sounded pathetic.” She chugged the remainder of her drink. “I’m just gonna slink off to the dance floor before I say something even worse. You with?”

Buffy eyed her drink. She didn’t know what the pink stuff was, but it tasted good and she kind of wanted to finish it and despite it being her first time with alcohol, she knew the rules about leaving glasses unattended. “Just a sec,” she said, wrapping her lips around the small straw.

Faith smiled. “Right. Well, you’ll know where to find me.”

Buffy nodded and continued drinking by herself. The liquid dropped steadily lower in her glass, and the world got… well, not fuzzier like she’d heard it described before. The world itself was just as clear as ever. It was the spaces between things that were fuzzing. And just looking at things, listening to things, turning her head… it felt  _good_.

She glanced around the club a bit, gradually sinking into her new senses, before finally focusing her attention back onto Faith. The girl had found herself a dance partner already—surprise, surprise—her bare arms flung up into the air and hips swaying sensually. She clearly didn’t care that her partner was a stranger, didn’t care about his name, didn’t care about his personality, didn’t care whether he was dead or alive… Faith wanted something and she took it. Simple as that.

Buffy glowered to herself.

If only  _her_  life could be as simple. It could never be as simple though because Faith was Faith and Buffy was Buffy and—

Buffy chucked aside her narrow straw and drank straight from the glass. Stupid soulmates. Stupid vampires. Stupid watchers. Stupid everything.

The temperature seemed to rise as more and more people crowded their way into the club. The cotton of Buffy’s sweater itched and itched against her skin. Everything was pressing against her too close, and she just wanted to scream. Meanwhile, not even ten feet away, Faith continued to dance. Oblivious. Not thinking. Not worrying. Just…

Living.

Buffy snapped.

She yanked her sweater off and fished for her pen. It took her two tries to get the cap off.  _Come to the Bronze_ , she managed to write in a somewhat clumsy hand.

She was finishing up the last of her drink, slurping up the dregs when he finally responded:

_why?_

Buffy snorted to herself.  _Just come._

Then, wiping her half of the markings off, she left her sweater behind and joined Faith on the dance floor.


	10. Heaven in a Shot Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - this story officially escaped the confines of my original outline and is laughing maniacally as it does its own thing.

A haze of dark blue and grey permeated the Bronze like a fog, obscuring bodies and making the cavernous room seem cloistered and intimate. Spike stole through crowd, letting his vampiric senses guide him where his eyes couldn’t. He followed the rising hairs on the back of his neck. Droplets of what he’d never admit was fear. The feeling grew stronger with each step.

A body bumped into him–a pretty brunette–and the sultry smile she threw his way let him know that, even if the collision  _had_  been an accident, it wasn’t an unwelcome one.

Bloodlust stirred through him, hunger growling its way towards the surface. The raw need crowded all previous thoughts as Spike debated the pros and cons of pulling the girl out in the alley–just for a minute–just to stop the itch…

He caught a flash of blonde from the corner of his sight.

The Slayer.

His summoner.

She was dancing up near the stage with both eyes closed, hips swaying in time with the low, steady rock. She looked like she had so many other nights over the past month… and yet something was different. As the current song swelled back into its chorus, she lifted her arms, skin bare and perfectly golden save for the small dark smudge at the front of her right wrist...

And then it hit him.

Her bare arms.

Spike hadn’t seen them since his return to Sunnydale, not since their truce. Wait... no, she’d been covered up then too. The last time he’d seen her bare limbs… It must’ve been seconds before she’d dropped that organ on him, more than a year ago now. Lingering traumas from Angelus no doubt. Bloody wanker still torturing them even after being all soul-shackled. But it was good to see that she’d gotten over said traumas for at least tonight. She needed it. Heat radiated from the club’s packed bodies, and the Slayer was no exception. Stray hairs caught to the sweat on her cheek. Her skin sparkled from the moisture, a kind of glow enveloping her.

As he stared, her eyes finally cracked open.

He was right there, smack dab in her field of vision, but she appeared not to see him, oblivious to the world as her lips curled up into a self-satisfied smile. She rocked her hips again.

Spike swallowed and felt a tightening in his groin.

Fuck.

The Slayer had always been a small, sexy thing. He knew that. He’d have to be blind or daft to try and pretend otherwise. But this…

This was a whole new level of perverse.

His eyes trailed up past her face, back up her arms where they were still held above her head, and focused on that tiny dark smudge on her wrist.

Not a smudge.

A word.

 _His_  word.

Mirrored from his skin onto hers for all the world to see.

The thought sent a possessive rush of heat through him, and Spike found himself suddenly wanting to make more marks. More words up and down her arms, up and down wherever she’d let him. His fangs in her throat, the resulting twin punctures all red and gleaming…

Demonic bones started to crunch into place before Spike forced himself to take a breath, forced the humanity back onto his face. Buffy was still mentally out for the count, but the girl behind her had flinched, was leaning forward and–

Oh bollocks.

It was the other Slayer.

Spike stepped back into the crowd as both girls stared straight at him. Logically he knew the extra meter wouldn’t do much protection-wise if both Slayers got it in their heads to launch a coordinated attack, but it still made him feel better.

As they held their positions, watching... waiting for someone else to move first, Spike tried to read what was there behind those green eyes.

The Slayer had invited him here. That meant she was cooking up some sort of plan. There was always a plan spinning in that head of hers, never mind the dumb blonde front she put on for everyone else. Then Buffy tilted her head back, stretching that perfect column of a throat. Spike licked his bottom lip as she whispered something in the other Slayer’s ear... Faith, her name was, if he remembered the Mayor’s files correctly. The dark-haired girl frowned but stayed where she was as Buffy began to make her way forward.

Spike fought the sudden urge to run– no, not run. Get her into his territory. Regain the upper ground. The element of surprise. His eyes flicked around the club, trying to catch sight of the other Slayerettes–Red with a magic book and one of her spells perhaps… or the Watcher with a crossbow...

“You want something?”

And then she was right in front of him. Arms crossed beneath her tits, pushing them up–

Spike forced his gaze back to her face. It was easier to read her movements that way. Block a possible staking. Although… his eyes swept over her body one last time; with her sleeves off, it left a lot less space to hide things. He cleared his throat. “S’bout to ask you that exact same thing.”

He started to lift his arm, but the Slayer pinned it straight back to his side.

“Bar,” she said. “Now.”

Spike lifted an eyebrow, but followed all the same. Faith was still on the dance floor, watching… He was getting the increasingly nasty feeling that he’d been led into some sort of bizarre Slayer trap.

Buffy, meanwhile, had already seated herself on the nearest stool, and was waiting expectantly for Spike to do the same. “Buy me something,” she commanded once he had settled.

Spike stared at her.

A new worry twisted its way across his brain. Buffy had been mind-controlled before; he’d heard the tale last year from several of his minions, and then again from Angelus sometime thereafter. Back parasites or something of the like. He twisted to try and see around her, but Buffy twisted with him. She frowned, looking at him like  _he_  was the crazy one.

“You alright?” he finally asked. At her silence, he felt compelled to elaborate. “Just, uh… Not like you to… well, and all.” He gestured half at the bar, half at himself.

Buffy shrugged, a wall of false casualness suddenly dominating all other features. How many times had Spike seen that expression before? Women realizing they could swap out their lonely, self-pitying romcom and ice-cream nights for more flashy–yet equally lonely–ones of clubs and tequila?

How many times had he played it to his advantage?

“Rule-abiding Buffy is taking a break tonight,” she said simply.

A shiver of hunger passed through him. And not just for blood. “S’that so?” Spike murmured, letting a predatory gleam shine through his features. He leaned in close, eager to make up for the embarrassment that was her Cruciamentum, but Buffy shoved him back.

“Said I wanted a drink. Nothing else.”

Spike glowered at her. “Sure thing, Princess.” The term slipped out before he could stop it. Damn. That one was supposed to be for Dru and  _only_  Dru. “Any requests?” he asked before she could comment on his flinch.

Buffy only shrugged again, so he took that as invitation to order a whiskey for himself and a rum and coke for her. As soon as the drinks arrived, she began sucking hers down, seemingly determined to ignore him. Spike continued to glance around the Bronze.

Still no Slayerettes.

This was getting weird.

“Still haven’t answered why I’m here,” he finally said.

“Really? You’ve always been dumb, but I never thought that dumb.” At his questioning look, she raised her glass.

“A meal ticket? Seriously?”

Buffy snorted. “Like you can get offended. That’s how you see everyone else, isn’t it?” She made a walking motion with the fingers on her free hand. “Little Happy Meals on legs?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

Spike tried to put his feelings into words. Other people were other people. Interchangeable sheep cowering against the wolves in the night. The Slayer was the dog that guarded them. The dog and the wolves fought each other, killed each other... but they never  _ate_  each other.

Okay. Actually, sometimes the wolves  _did_  eat the dog, but it was special thing. Like a treat. Or not a treat. Treat was too demeaning. A prize?

Did wolves even know what prizes were?

It was probably better that Spike had decided to run through his metaphor in his head first because this was going past weird and straight back into unsettling again. He glanced at the dance floor again.

Shit.

The other Slayer was gone.

She was still in the club somewhere. He could feel her distantly on the edge of his senses, so at least it wasn’t like she could  _completely_  jump out and surprise him. Just had to stay careful. Keep her on that edge, that’s all.

Spike turned his attention back to his Slayer. Both hands were around her glass now and she was draining it dry.

“How many’ve you had so far?” he asked.

Buffy shrugged. Default response tonight, that one. Her eyes dropped, focusing in on Spike’s drink.

He quickly yanked it away. “Oi. Already got you your own. Not exactly made of dosh now, am I?”

She rolled her eyes. “Like any of it was your money to start with.”

“Well... yeah. Got me there…” He tilted his head. “Though normally you’d be hemmin’ and hawin’ at me ‘bout that fact.”

“I already told you. Rule-abiding Buffy’s taking–”

“A break tonight. I remember.”

“Just a sip?”

Buffy pouted at him. Should’ve been annoying... but was somehow adorable instead, the way it just kind of made its home there on her face. Spike felt his own lips quirk up in a smile. Perhaps sharing wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Plus the Slayer was already on the fast path to getting utterly hammered, and it’d make for a fun fight if they got that far tonight. It wouldn’t be their final fight–he needed her at the top of her game for that one–but it’d be useful in throwing her off her game, install a little bit of rightful fear back in her.

“Fine,” he finally said, passing it over. “But just a sip.”

She ignored him and knocked half the glass down, and then immediately spit it back out, coughing.

“Oi!” Spike snapped. “Don’t  _waste_  it!”

“Oh my god...” she croaked, barely getting the words out. “What was that?”

“Whiskey. Straight.” He kept his amusement to himself as she stuck her tongue out and shuddered, her face twisted in disgust. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had pure spirits before, Slayer.”

As Buffy glared at him, Spike groaned in mock disappointment.

“The things they’re teachin’ in schools today…” He shook his head. “Or rather,  _not_  teachin’... Here, small sips. Let your throat get used to it first.” He reached out and steadied her hand, controlling the flow of the amber liquid. His gaze focused closer and closer in on the way the small muscles in her neck tensed and released with each tiny swallow that he didn’t notice the extra shiver until it was too late.

“So is this how you ‘take care’ of  _all_ the vampires these days, B?” asked a low,  female voice. “Or just the pretty ones?”

Buffy and Spike jerked apart.

As Buffy looked up into the disapproving face of the other Slayer, her eyes comically widened. She pointed at Spike. “I’m using– I mean,  _interrogating_ him.”

Spike stared at her. Okay, obviously that was exactly what she’d been doing–the using, not interrogating part–but it was still a bit demeaning hearing it said quite like that.

The next thing he knew, Faith had him yanked out of his chair and her fist was connecting with his face. The world went white. When it finally cleared, his brain was still struggling to keep up.

“Hey!” Buffy yelled, tripping over herself.

“No fighting!” a male voice bellowed.

Faith ignored both of them to throw another punch.

This time Spike was prepared. He managed to dodge her swing and landed a kick that sent her crashing into a table. Her head hit its surface and she went down.

Spike loomed over the carnage, grinning, until three bouncers grabbed his arms. He spun with a growl. They were weak. Human. It’d be all too easy to vamp up and throw them off… Course, doing so would be sure to cause future trouble–one of the key requirements in victim luring was being anonymous while doing so. Brawling while his demon was already at the forefront was fine, the club owners apparently too stupid to link two and two together. Making a ruckus when he was still very clearly his human self however…

A soft groan echoed through the club, catching his senses.

The other Slayer was right in front of him, struggling to her knees and clutching her head. A line of blood trickled down her forehead.

It was too much to resist.

Spike’s fangs descending and his bones started to shift–

“No.”

Buffy’s command was simplistic and final. The kind one’d give a misbehaving puppy dog.

Spike turned his head. The blonde girl was obviously smashed, pupils dilated and body swaying, but she stayed on her feet. She locked herself into a fighter’s stance, a cold glint in her eye. Faith was recovering too, pushing herself up from the wreck of a table.

Two slayers at half strength. He had a good chance of offing both of them…

The bouncers’ grip on his arms tightened.

...and a good chance them offing _him_.

“Right,” Spike muttered. He tugged himself a step towards the exit and the bouncers let him. Buffy’s mouth was set in thin line as she watched him go, all suspicion and accusation, like it’d somehow been all  _his_  idea to come here tonight.

It pissed him off.

Spike planted his feet. The bouncers stumbled and swung around him like a tin cans on strings.

“Just one thing, Slayer,” Spike said, locking his eyes onto to hers. “One thing to get through that thick head of yours. Next time you feel like rollin’ out the welcome mat? Do us both a favor and decide beforehand whether or not you actually want it unrolled.”

Buffy tensed but her expression didn’t change.

Typical.

Spike snorted to himself as the bouncers readjusted their grip and dragged him the rest of the way out of the club. He let them. Played the ‘nice’ vampire.

Soon as their shifts ended, he’d double back and pick ‘em off for fun.

* * *

Buffy watched the security guards haul Spike out, not loosening her guard until that shock of white hair– _both_  shocks, as the world went a bit double–was out of view. She blinked, trying to force everything back together.

Ughh… Everything had been of the good up until that last whiskey. Her stomach churned at just the memory of the tongue-scraping taste. She was pretty sure she was supposed to start stuffing herself with food–that was supposed to soak up the alcohol or something, wasn’t it?–but shoving a padlock over her mouth to stop from drinking or eating or saying anything ever again was seeming the better option.

Buffy heard a groan. It sounded just as terrible as she currently felt that it took her a second to realize it hadn’t come from her.

One of the Bronze’s more courageous waitresses was hovering next to Faith, attempting to grab her elbow.

Faith swatted her away. “I’m fine. Beat it.” And she might’ve looked fine if not for the head wound dripping blood down the side of her face. She glared at Buffy. “What?”

Buffy touched her own head in explanation.

Faith frowned, mirroring her. “What–? Oh…  _shit_.” Her fingers came back dipped in red. She cursed again, eyes stormier than Buffy had ever seen them. Then she stomped out of the Bronze without a word.

It took a couple blank moments before Buffy’s brain and body smashed back into sync with one another. She grabbed her sweater and chased after her.

“Faith!” she called out. The other Slayer was already halfway down the dark alley. “Wait up! What’s wrong?”

Faith whirled around. “What’s  _wrong_?! I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with trusting my partner to have my back, then finding her practically curled up in a vamp’s lap. What is it? Angel doesn’t have enough undead flesh to keep you going? Got thirsty for more?”

Buffy winced. “That’s not even–” She stopped herself, her head not anywhere near clear enough to spill the latest on private Angel drama let alone… well, let alone  _everything_  with Spike. “I already told you. I was interrogating him.”

“Interrogating? B, he’s a vamp. You know, main MO all stalk, bite, kill?” She counted them off on her fingers. “Not seeing much interrogating there that can’t be done with the sharp end of stick.”

“He’s been lurking around town. Planning something.”

Faith shrugged, lifting her palms to the world. “Sounds like all the more reason to stake him on sight.”

An automatic protest sprung to Buffy’s lips: sure, there were lots of stake-on-sight vampires, but Spike wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t mindless like a fledge. He deserved… No. All of that sounded wrong, even in her drunken head, so Buffy clamped her mouth shut before she said something stupid she couldn’t take back.

“But now that I think about it,” Faith continued. “You…” Her eyes sharpened. “That’s second time you’ve protected him. Or third if you count that time you said you chained him up in your basement. Never did get the full story on that…”

A queasy feeling stabbed through Buffy’s cooling alcoholic haze.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

She turned to leave, but Faith caught her by the shoulder, spinning her back around

“Nope. Not walkin’ out on me, Blondie. I need the truth.”

Buffy laughed. “Yeah? What happened to your ‘ _you belong to you_ ’?”

“Comes with limitations.”

“Right.”

“B, I’m serious.”

“So am I. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Uh… if we’re out here every night staking vamps together, and you’ve got a secret soft spot for them, then yeah. I think it does.”

“Well, I don’t,” Buffy growled. She shoved Faith’s hand away. “So it doesn’t.”

“Fine!” Faith shouted as Buffy turned her back on her. “Get yourself turned and eaten! What do I care?! But just remember: when I’m shoving my stake through your freshly risen corpse, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Buffy snapped.

She wheeled back around, fist driving towards Faith’s head who easily caught it despite her injury. She jammed a fist into Buffy’s side and–

Oh god.

Ten thousand cats wriggled up her stomach at the same time. She staggered sideways and threw up.

Her eyes burned with tears.

“You know,” Faith continued from somewhere behind her. “Everyone’s always going about perfect Buffy this and perfect Buffy that. You tell the council to piss off and everyone applauds you for it. I do it and it’s all, ‘Oh, Faith needs direction.’ ‘Faith needs to learn how to work as a team.’”

Buffy wanted to punch the other Slayer again, make her shut up, but her body wasn’t listening. She put her arms against the alley wall to stop her knees from buckling, bare skin scraping rough brick. As she clenched her empty hands, she realized she’d dropped her sweater, couldn’t remember when… She hoped it wasn’t currently by her feet, covered in yuck.

“None of them know the real you,” Faith was saying, words digging into her skin, “the you that lies about anything that’d ruin her perfect Buffy image, hides her vampire’s lover return because of her massive need to boink the undead, and then gets mad, actually gets  _mad_  when someone tries to stake him, tries to do their  _job_ , because that’s all–”

Faith cut off abruptly.

The silence was so unsettling that Buffy risked another gastric uprising to glance her way. The other Slayer was staring down the alley.

A vampire gang was approaching.

Five of them.

“Oh, just great…” Faith muttered. A stake appeared in her hand. “And I suppose you’re going to say your newest boyfriend didn’t have  _anything_  to do with this.”

Buffy grit her teeth, ignoring the acrid taste in her mouth. “He’s  _not_  my boyfriend.” Memories of Angel’s recent backyard pleading burned through her. “Neither of them are.”

“Right,” Faith said, clearly dismissive. “Just do me a favor and give me a heads up  _before_  you guys hit the lip-locking stage this time.”

The nearest vampire was now close enough that Buffy could pick out his rough stubble. His dark suit was well-tailored, but old, and ripped along the seams. It might’ve been the one he’d been buried in–some vampire were like that. He grinned at the two of them, seemingly cheerful, but there was no sparkle in his eyes. No joy. Not like…

Buffy shook her head.

“Not interrupting anything, are we?” he asked.

Faith smiled bitterly. “Not in the slightest,” she said before launching herself at them.

Buffy’s stomach was settling down again, and just in time as two of the vampires bypassed Faith, lunging straight for her. She supposed she could’ve tried vomiting as a fighting tactic–she was always up for new strategies and it’d definitely had that element of surprise thing going for it–but she found she was more than fine settling for the classics.

The vampires hit hard and fast. Buffy felt the sting of claws once, then twice, drawing blood along her cheek and her arms. She stared at them, mystified by their speed…

Wait. No, they weren’t fast. She was just slow. From her hazy memories of driver’s ed, came a nearly forgotten lecture about drunken reaction times and intoxicated people thinking they were more capable than they were.

The knowledge didn’t quite help her now.

Buffy spun into a counter-attack. Her kick hit, but as she stopped, the world didn’t get the memo and kept spinning.

Shit.

Buffy stumbled, then pulled herself up and looked over at Faith. The other Slayer was doing better, but not by much. She was going three against one and injured. All it’d take was one lucky swipe...

A clawed hand clamped down around her arm and Buffy was suddenly yanked forward. One of the vampires was right there in front of her, taking advantage of her distraction, pulling her neck straight towards his fangs–

Thousands of years of pure Slayer instinct took over.

Buffy slammed her head forward, knocking him back. He staggered and she pursued. She lost track of her movements, of the pain, of everything but the tingling senses that pulled her body this way and that. Her hand found a makeshift stake from somewhere. She lashed out whenever she could, barely noticing when she killed one vampire, then two. Adrenaline coursed through her overheated blood. Something suddenly moved behind her. She was still in danger. Faith was in–

“B, wait!”

Buffy’s stake drove through the man’s chest.

There was no dust.


	11. Robots That Bleed

The stake passed through the man’s chest like a warm knife through butter. Blood spurt out, staining her hands. The man’s eyes glazed over and he slumped to the ground. Lights flickered from overheard, periodically creating the illusion of movement, but Buffy knew the truth. He wouldn’t ever move again. Because he was dead.

She’d killed him.

Unlike in the movies, his eyes didn’t close in peaceful rest, but remained frozen open. They stared straight through her. Accusing her.

Something was ringing out, shouting in the distance. Words. Screams. It all sounded the same. Buffy tore herself away from the man’s pinning gaze, whirled around, tried to run, but there was no more exit. The alleyway was blocked off, a giant tombstone standing where there’d once was a street. The words on it were all fuzzy, but Buffy knew it was man’s name carved there.

His grave.

As soon as the realization hit, the flickering lights plunged out. Darkness pressed in around her, pressed down on her chest. She couldn’t breathe, and her arms instinctively scrambled towards her throat, but they were blocked by something heavy and damp.

Dirt.

Lungs burning, she half-crawled, half-swam her way up through the dead earth. Her hand broke through the surface first, grasping around nothing but the cold night air. The rest of her followed shortly after, and she gasped in what seemed like the first breath of a lifetime, except that wasn’t right because she didn’t need breath anymore. Didn’t need anything but the hunt and the kill and the blood of the man who was now standing there at the foot of the grave. Before she knew it, she had him pinned to the ground. Her fangs buried themselves in his neck, and his blood coursed down her throat, down her hands, staining them forever—

Buffy woke up with a choking gasp.

It took a second for her brain and lungs to kick back into sync, and in that second she panicked, thinking the dream had been real after all. A dizzy, almost nauseous relief filled her once she felt her heart racing in her chest, so intense it almost hurt.

That’s right. She wasn’t a vampire; she was human.

A human who’d killed someone.

Buffy stared blankly up at her bedroom’s dark ceiling before checking the clock on her bedside—3:03am. Her fourth nightmare tonight, and she hadn’t made it even halfway to morning yet.

So much for her beauty sleep.

Buffy let out a broken laugh that ended in a sob.

She’d just killed a man and she was already joking about it. Faith would’ve been proud. The other slayer had been the one to drag her out of the alley and back home, murmuring words of comfort and support along the way that Buffy had only partly heard. Buffy felt her stomach going sick again at the memory. How could she have just  _left_? Was the body still there, abandoned and unnoticed behind all the trash cans? Had the police found it? Was it already starting to decay, skin and organs disintegrating until there was nothing but bones?

Her eyes and head ached with exhaustion. All she wanted was to go to sleep, but sleep was the one thing she couldn’t have. She wasn’t sure she had the emotional strength for the inevitable traumatic nightmare number five. It was a nightmare she deserved though, and she probably  _should’ve_  gone to sleep, just to face it, but…

She was scared.

Buffy grabbed her feet and brought her knees up to her chest. Across her room, Mr. Gordo lay perched atop her dresser, looking innocently down on her. When she was little, she’d clutch him close, cry out in terror, and wait for her Mommy to come running. She would brush Buffy’s hair from her face, smoothing all her fears and problems away in the process. But this…

This wasn’t a problem that a mother’s love could make go away. That and Buffy had just gotten her mom to accept her calling. They’d reached a fragile understanding, a balance… and this would shatter it. If her mom found out what she’d done… Buffy wasn’t sure her mom would ever be able to look at her without disgust or horror ever again.

Buffy tore her eyes away from Mr. Gordo. Her gaze drifted around her suddenly unfamiliar room, eventually landing on her phone. She needed to call someone, distract herself from herself. Willow maybe. They sometimes called each other in the middle of the night, usually after a  particular nasty baddie had been vanquished or, more often, just to gossip about Angel. Still, “middle of the night” had never been as late as 3:03am. Willow would know something was wrong and want to talk, and Buffy  _did_  want to talk, just not about  _that_.

Never about that.

Buffy shuddered and tried to physically shake the memory of the dead man’s gaze as it floated back to her.

Giles and Xander were also on the “no call” list for similar reasons. But that was fine. She’d didn’t need a friend right now. Not really. Just a placeholder to get her through the night. Someone who wouldn’t pry, someone who was either insomniac or stupid enough that she wouldn’t feel guilty about waking them. Someone who…

Buffy paused from where she’d been unconsciously linking and unlinking her fingers. She stared down at them like some hippie stuck in some bad mushroom trip.

But it wasn’t.

She wasn’t drugged. And she wasn’t asleep.

Pushing herself up from her bed, Buffy grabbed a purple gel pen from the canister on her vanity. She hesitated for just a moment, and then drew four lines on her left wrist—two vertical ones, then another two that intersected them.

Her own tic-tac-toe grid.

She stared at it, waiting for Spike to make the first move.

His usual, near instantaneous response didn’t come. The seconds drew out, and Buffy’s lower lip started to quiver. What was she doing? Had she really been expecting to reach out to some soulless killer and that he’d… what? Reach back? Comfort her?

Her skin itched, feeling dirty again, but it was too late for a full shower. That and she’d already taken one as soon as she’d gotten home, standing beneath the spray until the water’d run cold, and it took hours for their house’s banged up old water heater to reheat. She could still stumble her way to the bathroom, scrub her hands, and drink a glass of water though.

Which she did.

It wasn’t until she was finally sliding back into bed, resigning herself to another nightmare when she saw Spike’s response. And it wasn’t an ‘x’.

_what the bloody fuck is wrong with you tonight?_

If Buffy hadn’t left the water glass in the bathroom, it would’ve slipped through her suddenly numb fingers and crashed to the floor. Panic crashed through her head. How did he know? Had he seen her somehow in the alley? Was he going to use the knowledge of the murder against her?

She ineffectually told herself to calm down over that last fear, that no one would believe a word he said anyway…

_i’m not some lapdog you can whistle for and kick away whenever you please, you know,_  Spike continued to write.  _starting to think you need a reminder of that, a bloody reminder. so whose it gonna be? red? the werewolf? the obnoxious whats-his-name?_

It took a second for his words to finally click into place—he was still mad at her for her little rebellious show at the Bronze. Her embarrassment then, her desperation to get him away from Faith before the other slayer realized the depth of their connection, had seemed like such a big deal at the time. Now…

_or maybe i’ll sink my fangs into that watcher of yours. send a message to that council of wankers at the same—_

_I’m sorry_ , Buffy wrote.

Spike paused in his rant. But only for a second.  _what?_

_I shouldn’t have—_  Ugh, she was starting to talk about goopy confusing feeling stuff. The exact opposite of what she’d written him for. She scribbled out what she’d written and drew an arrow at her earlier grid.  _You want to play tic-tac-toe or not?_

Again, he didn’t immediately response. Buffy braced herself for the worst. She’d made it three hours by herself in the dark so far. There were only four more till sunrise. It’d be hollow… taxing… but she could make it.

_what’s wrong?_

B uffy stared at her arm, breath frozen in shock, and then nearly laughed out loud. The big bad vampire suddenly cared about her feelings? Not for first time, the thought came to her that Spike was a pretty crummy vampire—allying with her to save the world, tottering back into Sunnydale in a drunken depression over his ex… It was almost like he was made wrong. Broken. But after tonight… Maybe she was too. And maybe that’s why the PTB had apparently thought they were perfect for each other. Broken vampire, broken slayer…

Her room seemed to shrink in on her, her chest too hollow for whatever feeling was boomeranging around inside it.

Movement caught her eye. A small ‘x’ was forming itself inside her tic-tac-toe grid.

Buffy carefully wiped her gathering tears away; if she smudged any of her ink, it might trigger more unwanted questions. Her fingers trembled as she made her corresponding mark. She could do this. It was all just tiny circles. Thoughtless, tiny circles.

Their first game ended in a tie, and Spike drew the next grid without prompting. He wasn’t as gracious as Buffy, and didn’t let her have the first move. Buffy couldn’t remember a time that he ever had. The vampire snatched at every advantage he could to win, no matter how small the competition.

Right now, she was fine with that.

They kept doing games; Buffy didn’t keep track of the wins and losses. When they ran out of space on their arms, they wiped the ink off and started all over again. Eventually, the clock on her bedside table read 3:57am. Buffy paused with her pen in hand. They’d never played this long before, even in the years before her Calling. Spike had to have been getting bored, and she almost wanted to ask him if he didn’t have anything better to do… But the current silence was comfortable—or as near to comfortable as she could manage right now—and a sudden gaping feeling at the thought of breaking it, like the edge of a cliff crumbling rapidly towards her, made her realize how much she didn’t want to.

So she kept her question to herself, readjusted the pillows behind her, and made her next move.

* * *

Buffy picked at her Cheerioes, totally exhausted. She’d ended up getting roughly two hours of sleep. After finally resigning herself to the new day, she’d locked herself in the bathroom, not emerging until her face was caked in cover-up and her dark circles were hidden. At least the makeup overkill didn’t look half as obvious as it would’ve a year ago. She’d gotten really skilled at it thanks to Angelus. As her biology teacher would’ve put it, it was an adapt or die world.

Her fingers trembled around her spoon. The problem was, that wasn’t the world she wanted to live in.

“Buffy?” her mom said, startling her out of her thoughts. “Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

Buffy’s face drained of the little color it still had. Her mom was standing at the kitchen doorway, looking concerned. “No,” she quickly lied. “Why?”

Her mom pursed her lips, like she was about to call Buffy out on her bluff, then: “Nothing… If you’re feeling sick though, you don’t have to push yourself. I can take your temperature, call Principal Snyder…”

Buffy’s spoon clattered against her cereal bowl. “I’m fine,” she insisted.

A knot of guilt settled in the bottom of her stomach. She didn’t deserve this kind of parental doting, and the feeling only worsened when she later grabbed her backpack to head out. Her mom sat in their living room, the morning news playing on the TV. Buffy lingered in the foyer, bracing herself for inevitable coverage of the man’s death, but there was nothing. Just the usual LA war-on-drugs and sappy local cat-rescued-from-tree type stories. She squinted at the news reel on the bottom, just in case she’d missed something that’d already been reported, then, finding nothing, forced herself to leave before her Mom could get suspicious again.

She made it two steps outside before she had to squint against the glare of the sun. It’d always given her comfort before, chasing demons away into their various crypts and basements, but now…

Even this early in the morning with the sun barely risen, it was  _too_ sunny. Too normal. Office workers started up their cars, putting leisurely out of their driveways. Here and there, stay-at-home moms shuffled out in their slippers, waved them goodbye, brought the paper in… Buffy closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Instead of dew-soaked grass, she was hit with the scent of stale ash and blood.

Her eyes snapped back open, and she staggered to stay upright.

It seemed  to take her twice as long to get to school, even though she knew the distance between her house and campus couldn’t have changed one foot. She fiddled with her lock, the everyday combination struggling to come to mind, and nearly snapped the metal when she finally yanked it open. The inside of her locker was a jumbled mess. She sorted through her books as quickly as possible, searching for the bare necessities that’d last her through lunch.

“Hey Buffy!” Willow chirped beside her. “How are you feeling?”

Buffy jumped. “Fine!” she replied, even quicker than she had to her mom. She gave an experimental laugh. “Why wouldn’t I be fine? Do I look not fine?”

“Uh, well… you were mad at Giles yesterday…” Willow’s expression grew cautiously hopeful. “Unless you guys got over it?”

“Oh. Um… yeah. Right. That.”

Willow brightened. “You mean you did? Buffy, that’s great!”

Shoot. So many thoughts and voices were screaming in her head, it was hard to keep a single conversation straight.

“I mean, no,” Buffy corrected before Willow got swept away in her enthusiasm. “Still in disagreement mode there.”

“Oh.” Willow looked so suddenly crestfallen that Buffy didn’t know whether she wanted to hug the girl or punch her. “Well, I don’t want to push you since there are definitely ‘eesh’ issues between the two of you that are well… ‘eesh,’ and sometimes those, you know, just take time, but Tara says it’s always better to—”

Buffy tuned out as Willow cheerfully launched into a full-out ramble. Once again perfect Tara had all the perfect answers. Slowly though, Buffy’s insides began to knot themselves into ever-shrinking balls. She glanced around the hallway. Were more people staring at her than usual? She couldn’t tell.

“Will,” Buffy finally interrupted once Willow began to explain the five stages of grief and how they could be applied to everyday conflicts. “Can we not do this right now?”

Willow’s face fell again. “Sure, Buffy. But just remember, if you need anyone to talk to…”

Buffy wrapped a hand around her sweater-covered wrist. She’d scrubbed away all the tic-tac-toe games but one. “Thanks,” she said. “I will.”

“Buffster!” Xander suddenly called out, palm high as he approached them from across the hall. “Willpower! How are my two favorite ladies this morning?”

Willow scrunched her nose. “Willpower?”

Xander shrugged. “Not a favorite I can tell. But don’t worry, I can take constructive criticism.”

“What?” Willow said. “Like the time Mrs. Atkinson critiqued your short story in third grade and you cried for a full week?”

Xander made a squawking noise of protest. “Dinoman was a noble hero and deserved all the praise of the literary world, and if Mrs. Atkinson wasn’t cultured enough to see that—”

Willow snorted. “Dinoman was lots of things alright.”

“Hey! Buffy, tell Willow she has no idea what she’s talking about!”

Buffy stared blank-eyed at the two of them, suddenly wishing a vampire would rush up and stake her— Wait. No. Bite her. Because that’s what vampires did.  _She_  was the one with the stake.

Taking a short breath to steady her nerves, Buffy forced herself to ask Xander about Dinoman, like normal Buffy would do, and then forced herself to smile through the resulting exuberant explanation. She followed her friends to first period, which was terrible. She tapped her pen blankly on her textbook as the teacher droned on and on and on about whatever grammar topic of the day. She still had no idea how she’d managed to get such a high SAT score. Maybe Willow had hacked the national computers and changed her score out of pity… Except Willow would never help someone knowingly cheat. It was the other thing she’d never do.

Just like killing had been the one thing Buffy’d known she’d never do.

F inally the bell rang and they tossed their supplies into their bags so they could plod off to their next class. Xander and Willow were still chatting animatedly with Buffy pushing herself to contribute wherever she could.

“Hey, B!”

Buffy briefly squeezed her eyes shut. Her day just continued to get better.

Faith slung an arm around Buffy’s shoulders who tried not to flinch at the contact. “You gotta minute to spare?” the other slayer asked with a wide, cherry-lipped smile.

“Oh, Faith. Hi,” Willow said. “I don’t know if Buffy can go with you.” She looked up at the hallway bell, a powerful witch suddenly kowtowed by nothing but silent bronze. “Class is about start.”

“I’ll be late,” Buffy said stepping away from them.

Willow’s face dropped in horror. “But—”

“It’s important.”

Buffy grabbed Faith’s arm and hurried away before Willow and Xander could stop them. The two slayers ducked into the nearest girl’s room right as the bell rang.

“What do you want?” Buffy snapped once its echo had faded.

Faith blinked at her. “Jeez, B. And here I was thinking a simple ‘thanks’ would be nice.”

“Thanks?”

“Yeah. You know, for getting you out of there? Steering you back home? Also, figured you’d want to know that everything’s gonna be fine. That I covered for you.”

Buffy stared at her. She was starting to feel like a mentally challenged parrot, but: “Covered?”

Faith shrugged, then checked beneath the stall doors, making sure they were unoccupied, before leaning against a sink. “Went back to alley and dumped the body. No one’s gonna find out what happened. Just…” Faith gave her another smile, this time a bit strained. “Don’t drink so much next time, okay?”

“Dumped the…” Buffy’s face went pale. “How do you know how to dump a body? You can’t just  _dump_  a body!” She imaged Faith tossing the man’s lifeless corpse in Sunnydale’s harbor, in a garbage dump, in the woods. “There’s… There’s fishermen with fishing things, and joggers with overly sniffy dogs, and—”

“W oah, woah! Give me a bit of credit. I thought it out, okay?” At Buffy’s insistent glare, Faith sighed. “Let’s just say SunnyD’s graveyards aren’t exactly hurting for fresh, empty plots.”

Buffy’s breath seized up. “You buried him in someone else’s  _grave_?”

“What?” Faith said, looking the perfect picture of innocence. “It’s not like the dust piles are using them anymore. Besides no one ever digs up graves, so like I said, it’s all gonna be fine.”

“It is not fine! A man is dead!”

Faith flinched, shoulders hunching defensively. “Yeah, he is. But the way I see it? He would’ve died even if we hadn’t been there. Vamps like to go chomp chomp, remember?”

“Are you even  _listening_  to yourself right now?”

Faith pushed herself up from the sink, stepping forward until she was staring Buffy dead in the eye. “What do you want to do then? Turn yourself over to the police?”

Buffy swallowed. “I should.”

“Right. And then what? You’re the Slayer. You lock yourself up, and all the other vamps get to run free. Party to their hearts content.” She crossed her arms, peering darkly at Buffy. “Although who knows. Maybe that’s what you’ve wanted this whole time. Hell knows you’ve partied with them before.”

Buffy snapped. Her fist swung towards Faith, but the other slayer caught it before it could connect with her face. Both of them remained locked, neither of them willing to bend.

“This isn’t about that,” Buffy finally said, words wrapped in steel. “It’s about making things right.”

“Yeah, and who decides what’s ‘right’?” Faith demanded with matching air quotes. “The law? Cause let me tell you, the law’s pretty slim when it comes to magic and the undead. Can’t remember a hefty section on Slayers either.”

Buffy remained silent, her fist still caught in Faith’s grip.

Faith stared at her for another long moment before releasing her. “Look,” she said with a heavy sigh. “I can’t pretend I know what you’re going through. And I  understand you probably need time to sort out whatever”—she gestured vaguely at Buffy’s upper half—“shit’s going through your head. But I’m just trying to be practical. God knows  _someone_  around here has to.” She paused, studying Buffy one last time. “So… see you after school?”

Buffy felt numb, like yet another part of her had unknowingly drifted off without her consent. “Yeah,” she heard herself say. “Sure.”

Faith smacked her on the shoulder and grinned. “That’s my girl.” She left the bathroom, and the hallway door thudded shut seconds later.

Buffy remained behind, hands slowly coming up to hug her arms. She turned towards the nearest sink and stared at its graffiti-smudged mirror. A blank, haunted face stared back.


	12. The Buttered-Parmesan Alliance

Tap, tap, tap.

“Buffy, have you been listening to even a single word that I’ve said?”

“Huh?” Buffy dragged her attention from the ancient book she’d been reading, or—more accurately—had been blankly staring at. An old-timey illustration of a corpse was printed across the right half of the page; red seemed to drip itself down between the black and white lines…

Giles sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as Willow offered her friend a sympathetic look. “Really, Buffy,” he said. “I understand you’re still upset with me, but that’s no excuse to neglect your responsibilities as a Slayer.”

“Shut the hell up,” Faith snapped. “What would you know?”

Everyone turned towards her. She crossed her arms, leaning against the checkout counter, and glared back.

Wesley was the first to recover. “Faith…” he said in an even stuffier voice than usual. “We don’t take that kind of attitude from Slayers.”

“That’s right!” Cordelia said, poking her head out from behind the stacks. She fluttered her eyelashes at the young, completely oblivious Watcher.

Faith scowled at her for a second before returning her gaze to the center table. “Come on, B. Back me up.”

Buffy froze like a gerbil chucked into the Arctic Ocean. Seven sets of eyes bored into her own. Eight if she included the dead, glassy eyes that were always there, always haunting her from the corners of her vision. “I- I don’t know,” she finally managed. “Maybe Wesley has a point. Respectfulness is… of the good.”

Wesley puffed himself up.

Faith let out a scoff of disgust. “Whatever. Not my funeral.” She grabbed her backpack and stormed out, the double doors swishing back and forth several times before friction slowly dragged them to a halt.

“Dang,” Xander finally said. “What’s her problem?”

Buffy ducked behind her book. “No idea…”

* * *

Faith was obviously pissed off, tension radiating from her like an ice-cold knife as they patrolled silently side-by-side through the gravestones. Buffy couldn’t exactly blame her… but she couldn’t bring herself to apologize either. Especially not when they were currently being tailed by their two Watchers.

She glanced back.

Giles was staring at her. Pensive. Alert. Earning his title. Wesley strode beside him, his nose glued into a book while rambling on about the ten necessary steps of keeping up a watchful guard. It was almost enough to make Buffy laugh.

Almost.

Her tinglies flared.

A vampire leapt out of the shadows. Wesley let out an unmanly squeal and thrust his book forward like shield. Buffy barely dodged its initial attack, stumbling as her feet fought to regain balance on the damp grass. Faith took up the slack, throwing kick after kick and punch after punch. The creature was a fledging from the looks of it—from the feral, unguarded nature of its attacks.

As Buffy locked eyes with Faith, her sister Slayer grinned. “Here, B. He’s all yours!” And she shoved the vampire towards Buffy.

Her muscles took over before her brain did. Two well-placed kicks and she had the vampire up against the wall of a crypt. Her arm snapped back like it had a thousand times before, ready to drive home the finishing blow—

Buffy met its gaze.

Met  _his_  gaze.

Warm, wet blood spilling over her hands…

The fledgling shoved her back. Pinned her to the ground.

“Buffy!” Giles shouted.

Buffy was too numb to do anything but stare. Death was approaching, cold and white and inevitable. Perhaps the man had felt the same feelings moments before she’d stabbed—

The vampire exploded in cloud of dust.

Faith was standing over her, her face blazing with fury.

“What the _fuck_ , B?”

Buffy remained lying on the ground.

Faith yanked her up by the jacket collar and slammed her against the nearby crypt. “You wanna lie down and mope at home?” Faith hissed. “Be my guest. But not here. Not while I’m trusting you to have my back!”

“Faith!” Giles shouted. “Let her go this instant!”

“Yes! W-What Mr. Giles said!”

Faith kept her grip on Buffy’s shoulders, brows drawing into a tight line as she seemed to search for something in her sister Slayer’s eyes. Giles and Wesley tried to grab at her, but she shoved them away.

“Faith!” Wesley shouted, scrambling to re-straighten his glasses. “I’m not sure what has upset you, but t his conduct is most unbecoming a Slay–!”

Faith let go of Buffy to lunge at the younger Watcher. He squeaked and flinched back.

“I have had it up to  _here_ ”—she slammed her stake at an imaginary point in the air—“with your bullshit Slayer conduct!” She fell back into a loose stance. “You guys are okay with chucking a couple girls out against all the world’s nasties, but what? It’s no good unless you get them to smile and curtsy and say fucking ‘please’ while they’re at it?” Faith shook her head. “So fucking bogus…”

And then she was off again.

“Faith! Come back here!”Wesley shouted. “I did not officially dismiss you.”

She tossed up her middle finger and kept walking.

“Faith!” He turned to Giles. “How do you retrieve her?”

Giles had his glasses off and was polishing them. “I’m afraid you don’t.” He frowned at Buffy who hadn’t moved from the side of the crypt. “Buffy, are you alright? Did she injure you?”

“I…” Her voice was hoarse, her nerves trembling. “I need to go home.”

“Home?” Wesley sounded completely and utterly confused. “But we’ve barely started the night.” He pulled out a sheet of paper that’d been folded inside his book. “I have us scheduled to patrol Northacres for another seventeen minutes, after which we’ll move to Restfield for—”

“Not now,” Giles said, shutting him up. He studied Buffy with an inscrutable look. “If going home is what you feel you need, then perhaps that’s what you should do. You shouldn’t patrol if you’re feeling less than your best.”

Wesley turned crimson. “Not her best? We are talking about people’s lives here! Every vampire she doesn’t stake is another soul in jeopardy, and as the Slayer she has a responsibility to—!”

“She doesn’t have a responsibility to anything while she’s clearly sick!”

“Sick? Who performed this diagnosis?”

“She doesn’t need a bloody diagnosis. It’s obvious that there’s something wrong with her!”

“To you perhaps. And I think we both know how your… over-exuberance in protecting her has clouded your judgement in the past.”

“My dismissal from the Council has nothing to do with this and—”

Buffy braced herself against the side of the crypt, its stone chill and rough beneath her fingers. The two Watchers were going on and on, arguing about her like she wasn’t even there. It started to reach a fever pitch, their shouts drowning out the rest of the world. Neither of them noticed Buffy clutching her stomach until she finally keeled over and threw up.

* * *

 

Giles rushed her home. They’d left Wesley looking lost and uncertain in the cemetery, but Buffy knew Giles would rush back and start gossiping as soon as she was tucked into bed. Hell, Giles was probably  _already_  gossiping, corrupting her mother downstairs into a well-meaning, but uni spy. Despite the invasion of privacy, Buffy couldn’t find it in herself to care.

There was a knock at her bedroom door.

“Buffy?” Her mother’s voice was muffled through the wood.

And speaking of gossip…

“Come in,” Buffy said.

Her mom instantly flocked to her beside. As she began to study Buffy in silence, Buffy looked away, feigning sudden interest in the shape of her dresser handles.

“Giles said you weren’t feeling well.”

Four drawers. A round knob at the center of each one.

“And… I’ve noticed you haven’t been feeling well.” Her mom’s face pinched into a tight frown. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take your temperature?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Buffy said, not turning her head.

“Is it something at school?”

“No, everything’s fine.”

“I know it’s probably hard to balance this Slaying with—”

“I said I’m fine!” Buffy snapped.

The words echoed in the silence. Her mom stared at her with wide eyes.

“Alright,” she finally said. She retreated back to the door, then paused, placing a hand on its frame. “I want you to know though… no matter what, you’ll always be my daughter. I’ll always love you.”

_No, you won’t._

The thought came before Buffy could stop it. She kept her jaw clenched tight until the door finally clicked shut, and then it all spilled out in one silent shudder. Sleep wasn’t gonna be coming tonight; Buffy knew that before she even  _tried_  closing her eyes. Staring at the ceiling wasn’t doing much good either. It did nothing to distract her head from its thoughts, and her stomach—already sore from earlier—began to clench worse and worse. She needed… What she needed was…

Her pen was out of her drawer and at her wrist before she could let herself think. The tic-tac-toe grid drew itself like it was second nature. Then she flopped back against her pillows and waited until:

_slayer, what’s wrong?_

Buffy stiffened. Goddammit, she’d had enough of that from Giles, from Faith, from her mom… Spike wasn’t supposed to—

She scribbled furiously over the vampire’s words, blocking them out. As soon as she finished, she blinked at what she’d done and flinched. Something about the scribbly black mess staring back at her felt wrong—a tugging, guilty wrong. They’d never scratched out one another before… Not that it was something they’d ever made strict rules about…

Buffy laughed to herself. She and the soulless vampire had rules that they followed. Rules that she actually  _expected_  him to follow, and—

And he did.

She stopped laughing. As she thought about that—tried  _not_  to think about it—Spike placed his first ‘x’ into the center of her grid and the game was on. Lesson apparently learned, Spike didn’t try write anymore words except to venture a game of hangman half an hour later, and then half an hour after that:

_do you know dots-n-boxes?_

Buffy pursed her lips, trying to figure out whether or not it was some trick to get her to start talking. Though… even if it was, it wasn’t like she’d be forced to answer anything.

_No_ , she wrote back.

_hell, slayer. how’ve i never taught you— never mind. so you’ve got this grid right?_

Spike’s explanation took a temporary pause as he drew a four-by-four grid of dots on her arm. After that, he went over the basic rules, how they’d take turns drawing lines to make squares of territory. The person with the most territory at the end was the winner. Simple enough. It took longer than their other games, which was unexpectedly nice, and when Buffy lost terribly the first time, it stung enough to drive her into challenging him again.

Beneath the surface level distraction, Buffy knew there was a shameful irony in escaping her guilt by playing kid games with a serial murder, and one who didn’t even feel guilt at that… Although, she could ask him about it. Ask him about the people he’d killed, whether he remembered all or some or none of their faces. After two nights of indulging her with games, she was pretty s ure he’d talk about whatever she wanted to talk about…

But as soon as he finished answering, he might turn it around and ask about her.

No. He _would_  turn it around and ask about her.

Buffy kept her pen in a tight grip and silently laid her next line.

* * *

Faith shoved her hands into her jean pockets as she trudged her way across town. The waxing moon hung low in the west sky. She was still running hot from patrol but didn’t feel like taking the time to drag someone all the way back to her bed, didn’t feel desperate enough to risk a quickie in an alley, especially not the alleyway where Buffy had—

Memories crashed over her. The man’s body pressing down heavy as she’d lugged it over her shoulder. Thumping as it’d hit like a sandbag into the empty grave. Faith had washed her hands afterwards. Washed them several times.

And Buffy hadn’t even been grateful.

Faith crossed beneath an underpass, keeping alert for any hint of movement. The motel was still a ten minute walk away. If she was lucky she’d get to bed by 1:00, then grab six hours of sleep before rolling out of bed for yet another bright, sunshine-y day. Buffy and the other Scoobies always complained about late nights and early mornings then chuckled at Faith when she tried to complain too.

_“Like it matters to you… It’s not like you’re exactly the striving-for-a-4.0-average type.”_

Frustration roared inside her. Just because she didn’t care about school all the time didn’t mean she wasn’t entitled to some fucking sleep—

She kicked a rock. It hit a car across the street, leaving a sizable dent.

Shit.

No one saw that.

She glanced around the street, checking…

Nope. Still empty.

Faith’s shoulders hunched forward and she hurried on. Her stupid self-pity fest continued another several blocks, punctuated—finally—by the echo of familiar growls. Her head whipped around.

Double shit.

Several car lengths down, two vamps were pulling a middle-aged businessman into an dark alley.

What was it they said? No rest for the wicked?

And wasn’t  _she_  the wicked one…

Faith charged forward, taking out the first vampire before he’d even realized what’d staked him. The second managed to hold his own against a couple kicks and punches, but soon joined its partner in a dusty mess. The day—night?—officially saved, Faith exhaled and brushed away a couple clinging wisps of hair with the blunt end of her stake.

“Wowwee,” a voice exclaimed. “Well, now, don’t  _you_  pack a punch for a young lady your size?”

Faith whirled around, stake high. The man who’d been about to get munched was looking back at her, his empty hands up in the universal sign of surrender.

Right.

Think first. Stake later.

“Mayor Richard Wilkins,” he said. “The Third.”

Faith stared at him. “Huh?”

“The Mayor,” he repeated. “Of Sunnydale.” At her still confused expression, he sighed. “You young kids… Old enough to vote, but do you get involved? Take part in the system? No. Outnumber the retirees two to one, but influence none the policy.”

“Right…” Faith side-eyed the Mayor for a moment—he seemed human enough—and then finally lowered her stake. “So,” she said, “what  kind of fucked up election do you have to be in to get elected ruler of Sunnyhell?”

The Mayor’s smile dropped. “Hey, now. I appreciate you saving my life, but I don’t have to appreciate that kind of language. Did you mother raise you like that?”

Faith bristled, echoes of TV dinners accompanied by profanity-laced screaming drifting back to her. “Yeah. She did.”

“Oh, my dear girl…” His face creased and Faith looked away; she didn’t need to see his pity. “Well, families aside, I want to thank you for saving my life. Not that I much to offer in thanks—not readily on hand, that is. Except for… Although I wouldn’t dare impose…”

“Impose what?”

“I have a midnight dinner reservation for Tulio’s. Just this little Italian place, nothing fancy. A plus one’s the least I can offer my savior.”

Faith stepped back. “Are you asking me out?”

“No, no!” The Mayor’s hands flew up again. “Happily married, and happily widowed for that matter. Family man, me.”

“Not hungry,” Faith lied as her stomach clenched in on itself. Full nights of slaying worked up her appetite across the board, and all that waited for her at the motel was empty Burger King wrappers and a single bag of stale chips.

“Oh, that’s a terrible shame,” the Mayor said. “Tulio’s is a town treasure. The head cook’s chicken parmesan breaded with flakes that melt on your tongue with just the slightest hint of butter—” The mayor kissed the ends of his fingers before coming back to himself. “But, if you’re not hungry, I suppose it can’t be helped…”

Faith swallowed back a sudden outpour of drool. “Well,” she coughed. “I’m not, but that’s— If it’d make you feel about the whole me saving you— And, uh…” Another thought hit her. “I suppose I could go with you. Make sure you don’t get attacked again on the way there.”

The Mayor grinned broadly. “Wonderful! I’ll call my man, and he’ll have us there before you can say ‘two shakes of a lambs tail.’”

Faith felt herself smiling back. Although—as the Mayor dialed some number on his cellphone—she wondered why he hadn’t called a cab from the start. One office to restaurant transfer, vamp free. She chalked it up to Ordinary Joes, all men really, thinking they were hotter than they were not. Invincible.

She snorted to herself.

Men. When the deadly chips were down, all of them came crawling back to the Slayer…

A black sedan pulled slowly up to the curb.

Of course… if the Mayor was the one really doing the crawling, then why was he the one with the fancy ride while she was stuck kicking rocks as she slummed her way home to a crappy motel?

Faith slipped her stake into her back pocket as the Mayor opened the back car door. He held it open, gesturing her in like  some sort of sweet sixteen princess.

Just great.

The car pulled forward, and the Mayor began pleasantly chatting about this and that—local landmarks, upcoming civic projects—as if she was some pastel-printed PTA mom that he’d just picked up from some fundraiser instead of a Slayer who couldn’t have given less of a fuck.

“Do you even know what attacked you?” Faith finally spat out.

The Mayor paused in the middle of his story about the local dog park renovations. “Vampires,” he said. “One subset of our city’s lovely undead demographic, and frankly—of that demographic—one of its absolute worst.” He shook his head. “No concept of civic service whatsoever.”

“Civic…”

“And I know you, Little Miss Slayer.”

Faith jumped, her hand automatically reaching for her stake, but the Mayor didn’t move.

“I have to confess,” he continued jovially. “This dinner is thanks for more than just my life. I know you protect this city, that you’re an invaluable asset to the community, and I want to you to know that I appreciate it.”

Faith’s cheeks burned. Great. All she needed now was a fucking plaque and a round of forced clapping from an auditorium of third graders “If I’m so great,” Faith said snidely, “why haven’t you come up to me to say it before?”

“Oh, I’ve tried. Believe me I’ve tried, especially in the early days of my incumbency, but those Watcher folks of yours… let’s just say they’re not the friendliest of people.”

“That’s for damn sure.”

The car reached the restaurant—an old establishment set into an even older brick building. Faith peeled out before the Mayor could do a repeat of the whole car door chivalry thing. Inside, the woman leaned against a reservation booth; she fished out two menus without prompting and lead them through a dimly lit dining room to a small table in the back.

Faith opened her menu and frowned. There were no prices.

“The garlic shrimp pasta’s another good one.”

Faith looked up.

“If you’re not a fan of chicken,” the Mayor clarified.

“…right.”

Faith twitched in her chair. Beneath her menu, five separate pieces of silverware gleamed. The napkins had a finer thread count than her bed sheets. She didn’t even know why she was here, why she’d agreed— Her stomach rubbled. Right. That’s why.

When the waiter came, the Mayor ordered his chicken parmesan and Faith found herself echoing him. The man  _didn’t,_  however, let her echo his order for a glass of Merlot. Faith put up a fuss, tried to play her Slayer Savior card, but he pushed back about legal drinking ages and Faith eventually sunk back and settled for a can of cherry Coke. She looked around the crowded restaurant, the conversations from the other tables blending into an even white noise murmur. She’d never heard of midnight reservations being a thing, but Sunnyhell was special like that.

“So what’s it like, being the Vampire Slayer?”

Faith dragged her attention back to their table. She shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “Not sure.”

The Mayor frowned. “But you’re—”

“ _A_  vampire Slayer,” she corrected. “One of two.”

“Oh, right. I’d heard a little about that. H ow’d that happen exactly? Seems like it’d be something pretty darn big to throw a wrench into the ‘one girl in all the world’ part of the description.”

“Yeah,” Faith said. She picked up the smallest fork, twirled it slowly against her pinky. “Ancient mystical rules apparently fall flat against the equally mystical art of CPR.” At the Mayor’s inquisitive yet blank look, Faith sighed. “B died for thirty seconds; got compressed, compressed, puffed back to life; and that was apparently enough to summon me.” She gave him a twisted smile. “Faith. The Vampire Back-Up Slayer.”

The Mayor looked contemplative. “If the power passed to you,” he finally said, “wouldn’t that mean you’re the real Slayer and  _she’s_  the back-up?”

Faith paused. She’d never thought of it that way before. At least not since she’d arrived in good old SunnyD. Not since she’d surrounded herself with a posse that treated B like the second goddamn coming of Christ…

Her thoughts were interrupted by their drinks arriving—Merlot and Coke both in identical glasses. She eyed the Mayor’s wine one last time before giving up for the night; she’d save her button pushing for where it’d get her the most bang for her buck. With the drinks, the Mayor started asking questions. Questions that Faith didn’t really feel like answering, but hey, he was treating: Where was she originally from? Boston? How was it there? Did she come to Sunnydale all by herself? Where did the Watchers have her set up?

Faith hesitated answering the last one. “Sunset 8,” she finally said.

“That motel by the freeway?” the Mayor said, visibly shocked and disgusted. “A young lady like you?”

Faith bristled. Took another sip of her coke. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know. It’s not about that.  You saved my life tonight, Faith. I don’t doubt your physical capability in the slightest.” He shook his head. “No, it’s about what’s right.”

Right.

The word clawed at her skin. And suddenly Buffy was there, or the ghost of her anyways, standing behind the Mayor, her shoulders tense and her eyes dead and her mouth all pressed together and self-righteous—

“Those Watchers are a secretive bunch, I’ll give you that,” the Mayor continued. “Don’t get away with everything though.” He considered his wine glass before taking a sip. “Income gets reported to the city for tax purposes. And guess how much that lazy weasel of yours is making.”

“Weas—? You mean Wesley? Umm…” She hadn’t thought much about that before either, but supposed the suits Mr McSnooty wore everyday didn’t exactly come from the bargain rack at Goodwill. “Fifty grand a year?” she guessed, feeling squeezed out even as the words left her lips. If she had that much…

“Oh, Faith…” The Mayor was opening frowning now. “Try tripling that.”

She froze. “W-what?” She felt herself going cold…hot… some mixture of the two. “Those bastards… They don’t give me a dime!” she hissed. “And I’m the one out there every night doing the work! They wouldn’t even have a job if not for me!”

“Deplorable, I agree. Also remember—language.” He seemed to ignore Faith as she rolled her eyes. “And if it was within my power, I’d bring them to court. Charge them for the way they use you. Charge them for the way they use the both of you…” He sighed. “But I can’t. Slaying as a profession… Unfortunately it’s not quite documented under the courts, and— Oh, here’s our food.”

As soon as the plates were set down, Faith’s stomach gave another clench of hunger. She tore into her chicken while the Mayor fussed around, crisply pressing his napkin against his lap, and— Shit. He was right. This  _was_  good. Better than anything she’d had in the past year, the past months and months of nothing but McDonalds and microwaved meals…

“Going to be real honest, Faith,” the Mayor said.

Faith looked up from her plate but didn’t stop chewing.

“Seems to me like you need a good friend. One with power and weight to throw in your corner.”

A laugh bubbled out of her throat before she could stop it. “Don’t have much of a good track record with those.”

“All the more reason to try again.”

Faith remained silent for a good, long while. “Does friendship come with with more of this?” she finally asked, gesturing towards her chicken. “Cause I gotta say, you were right on the money about the breading and butter stuff.”

“Whatever you need to succeed.”

Faith studied the Mayor, sizing him up. After Mrs. Post and Buffy and all the others… she was kind of sick and tired of handing her trust over on a silver patter. More than kind of… But as long she kept some cards to herself, got some perks out of it in return…

What was the worst that could happen?

“Sure,” she said with a non-committal shrug.

The Mayor beamed. “Excellent!” He raised his wine glass. “To friendship.”

Faith took her coke and softly clinked it against his. Her lipped tugged up in a tiny smile:

“To friendship.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raised the rating to Mature so I don't have to worry about censoring language or super heavy UST content in future chapters.


	13. Last Year's Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the amazing OffYourBird

Buffy tromped through the cemetery, trying to keep it together. And she  _did_ have it together. She was all about the togetherness.

A steady gust tore its way through the air, tugging at her clothes and hair. After Buffy’s last misadventure, Giles had forbidden the two Slayers from splitting up, but tonight they’d felt a disturbance in the force—a smattering of tingles on opposite ends of the cemetery—so Faith had gone in one direction to take on the bigger, riskier clump, while Buffy had been left to wander towards the singular, currently stationary one.

Stationary tinglies usually meant a super newborn—or newdead, rather—fledge, not yet popped out of the ground. Despite her earlier struggles, as long as she got there before it’d fully risen, it would be a piece of—

Her senses flared, an electric chill flaring down the length of her spine.

Movement. There. Out of the corner of her eye.

She spun, stake driving home—

Into a tree.

The stake bounced off, sending numb shocks up and down her arm. Shit. She flexed her muscles, trying to shake away the feeling.

“Nice work, love. Staked yourself a real terror there.”

Buffy whirled around. Spike was sitting on a nearby tombstone, one leg drawn up. His hands cupped themselves around a lighter and cigarette.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

He dropped the lighter and drew in a lungful of smoke. “Vampire. Graveyard… Really have to ask?”

“There’s no prey for you here.” At least, she hoped there wasn’t—Sunnydale residents tended to have the lifespan of mayflies when it came to basic hey-babe-let’s-go-check-out-that-dark-shadowy-thing-in-the-distance horror movie don’ts.

“There’s you,” Spike said.

Buffy stared at him. An unsettling feeling roiled in her gut. “Get out of here, Spike,” she said simply, then started walking back towards the point where she and Faith’d split up.

“What? Gonna leave me here, just like that? The big bad vamp, ready to munch on whomever walks by? Aren’t I part of your great grand dustin’ responsibility?”

Buffy clenched her jaw shut in exasperation; after a week of numbness, she’d almost forgotten how familiar that particular emotion used to be. She turned back around. “You wanna be dusted? Nice tree over there, nice sharp branches. How about you take some advice from the Home Depot and go do it yourself?”

Spike shrugged. “Not nearly as fun.”

He took another drag from his cigarette, looking for all the world like some granny casually chatting up an old friend across a bingo table. A very pale and chiseled granny. A granny who draped herself in leather and whose very presence made the hairs on the back of her neck go haywire and… and Buffy suddenly remembered that she was talking to a master vampire. She’d almost turned her back on a master vampire. Shit, she was spiraling into Stupid Decision Central faster than she’d realized. Cold reality reasserted itself, and she tightened her grip on her stake.

Spike’s gaze flickered toward it. “You can try, Slayer. But you’ll never get close enough to use it.”

“Oh, really? Because, as far I can remember, I’ve wiped the floor with you before. Multiple floor wipings. So many wipings I think the floor people have stopped buying wax.”

“True,” Spike said. “But that was back when you were at top of your game.”

Buffy stiffened. Forced a laugh. “Who says I’m not now?”

Spike tilted his head back and exhaled a steady cloud of smoke toward the thin-slivered moon as if to blot it out. “Admittedly been a long time since I’ve been human,” he said, “but far as I can remember… you lot need more than just two hours of a sleep a night.”

Buffy flinched. Her free hand gripped itself around her jacket-covered forearm before she could stop herself. She quickly ungripped it. “Slayer,” she said, by way of explanation. “Don’t need as much.”

“Right.” His pause as his eyes swept over her body—head to toe and back again—seemed to last forever. “Cute theory that. Feel like putting it to the test?” He tossed his cigarette aside and leapt to his feet.

Buffy felt herself take an instinctive step back— No, this was beyond instinctive. Disgust was coiling inside her, rising up through her throat. Was this why he’d indulged her every night? He’d been using their childhood games to get under her skin, drawing out weaknesses without her having to say a word… The disgust burned into shame. She was a disgrace of a Slayer, practically begging the enemy to waltz over so she had a nice shoulder to cry on… He’d been right about one thing though—she did have a great, grand Dusting Responsibility (TM) and great, grand Dusting Target Numero Uno was standing right in front of her with a face just begging to…

Buffy launched herself at him.

A snarl reached her ears. She didn’t know who it came from; only that, in that moment, the world suddenly narrowed itself down to just him and her and the life and death and push and pull of the fight. There was no room for anything else. As they continued to attack and dodge, duck and lunge, something began to well up inside her… Not a feeling. More like a  _lack_  of feeling, but so much different from the blank numbness that’d been wracking her from the inside out. Whatever this was, it just  _was,_  and it was there and not there, and as she ducked his latest punch, it was almost thick enough to grasp—

Buffy swung a kick at Spike’s side. He dodged, feet retreating in smooth steps that must’ve been seared into his muscle memory decades and decades ago. Steps that took him straight over a broken tombstone.

He tripped on the calf-high stone and fell.

Buffy followed. Pinning him against the ground, she straddled his chest and lifted her stake—

Spike stared back up at her, yellow eyes widening with sudden fear.

She froze. Was he really scared or was it just crocodile tears? The last line defense against—

Clawed hands gripped her waist and flipped her over. Shit. Back slamming against the damp grass, Buffy squeezed her eyes shut against the inevitable pierce of fangs.

They didn’t come.

She cracked her eyes back open just in time to see Spike slip back into his human face. Then he frowned at her. Just frowned, like he was judging her, and suddenly it was the Cruciamentum all over again. Buffy was too weak and sorry and lost to be taken seriously anymore—and, somehow, that judgment—coming from blue eyes this time, not yellow—made the shame pierce that much deeper. Her heart pounded against her chest. Pounded so hard, it almost hurt.

“B?” Faith called out, all echoey and distant and  _way_  too close at the same time.

Buffy shoved Spike off of her. “Get out of here!” she hissed. When the vampire didn’t move, she pushed him again. “Go!”

Finally, he tore his eyes away from her and stumbled back to his feet. He’d only just slipped back into the shadows when Faith arrived, flush and rosy from jogging.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where’s your vamp?”

Buffy got up and brushed her hands off on her pants. “Uh…” She couldn’t lie and say he’d dusted; Faith could sense the truth. Could sense the tingly blip, getting fainter and fainter. “He got away.”

“And you’re not running after him… why?”

Buffy winced. “He’s really fast?”

Faith studied her for a moment. “Right,” she eventually said, obvious disappointment lacing through her tone. “Well, my half of the cemetery’s clear. Come on, let’s do the next.”

Buffy reluctantly let Faith sling an arm around her shoulders and steer her back towards the cemetery entrance.

* * *

Mr Trick blocked the door, looking smug despite his current position as nothing more than a glorified bodyguard to a weaselly middle-aged human. Even the vampire’s name made Spike want to scoff. Mr. Trick? Only a pompous wanker would name himself— Okay, perhaps he wasn’t exactly the  _best_  demon to throw stones on that particular subject, but…

Oh, bugger it.

Spike grabbed Mr. Trick by his suit lapels and threw him into the adjacent wall. Door clear, he barged into the Mayor’s office.

“What have you done to the Slayer?” he demanded.

The Mayor looked up from the stacks of paper that covered his desk. “Spike!” he said with a genuine smile. “Nice to see you. What’s this about the Slayer?”

“You’ve been doin’ something to her. Messin’ with her head.”

“Oh? Which Slayer?”

Spike grit his teeth. He thought her name often enough—used to write it even more than that, but it was somehow different saying it. “Buffy.”

The Mayor frowned, looking thoughtful. “I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. My current focus has been on—”

Spike growled and lunged forward. He let his claws rake deep gashes in the mahogany, scattering papers to the floor. “Don’t you  _bloody_  dare lie to me! This was not part of our deal.”

The Mayor continued looking perplexed. “I assure you, I’ve done absolutely nothing to impact Miss Summers’s mental stability. Of course, now that you’ve mentioned it, the idea  _does_  have plenty of merit…” He chuckled as Spike’s claws gouged deeper. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding! Although…” The Mayor stopped chuckling. His eyes narrowed. “I’m quite curious why you care.”

Spike backed up. “I don’t,” he quickly said. “Just wanna get a proper fight outta the bird, that’s all. And I can’t do that when she’s all mopey and broken, now can I?”

The Mayor stared calmly at him, his face a pleasantly smooth mask. Like one of those Nazi scientists, Spike suddenly thought. All enthusiasm and no soul. All that was missing was the lab coat and the—

“So how do you know something’s been bothering her?” the Mayor asked.

For once, Spike thought before he spoke. His ‘alliance’ with the Mayor had been shakily founded on one core promise—Spike stayed away from the Slayers while the Mayor worked on ways to separate one from the other. Spike had now broken that promise several… a dozen times over. Course, the Mayor had just admitted he’d been breaking it himself by ignoring Buffy entirely.

Spike leaned back, hands diving into the pockets of his duster. “I have my sources.”

“I’m sure you do.” The Mayor surveyed the desk carnage in front of him and sighed. “This piece was an heirloom from Walter O’Brienn, you know—the founder of Sunnydale’s first…” He sighed again. “Never mind. Casualties of the job.” A new smile in place, he returned his attention to Spike. “I promise, on my honor as Mayor, I’ve not undertaken any psychological warfare on Miss Buffy Anne Summers.”

Spike sized him up, trying to suss out whether any word of that was true. He sniffed. Couldn’t smell the usual rise in sweat, the spike of adrenaline that usually came with human lies. And the Mayor was human. Or at least looked and felt and smelled human—which was enough of a test for ducks, so should’ve been enough for humans… So why was a little voice in the back of his skull still screaming that something was wrong?

“Fine,” Spike finally growled out. “But if you’re lyin’ to me,” he jabbed a clawed hand toward the Mayor, “I’ll rip out your intestines and use ‘em to string up your dried corpse on that lovely flag pole outside. Make a lovely picture for all those the kiddies out on their school trips.” He waited a hopeful second for the threat to sink in, but the smile didn’t even twitch off the Mayor’s face. With a final impotent snarl, Spike stormed out.

* * *

Faith angrily speared a sushi roll with her chopstick. “And it’s like they forget that  _I’ve_  been trying too.” She popped the roll into the mouth, her tongue lingering on the burn of the wasabi. “More than trying.  _I’ve_  been the one bagging all the vamps recently, but they don’t even—” Her grip tightened and the wooden chopstick cracked in half. Faith scowled at it, then dropped it beside its already shattered partner. Hopefully the restaurant wouldn’t care.

She picked up the next sushi roll with her fingers.

“Sorry to hear that,” the Mayor said, seated across from her. This was their fourth—fifth dinner? Faith’s stomach was starting to get used to it.  _She_  was starting to get used to it. In fact, it was probably the best thing that’d happened to her since she’d first rolled up in Sunnyhell. “And forgive me for saying, but it doesn’t sound quite right.” His voice was laced with concern. Faith realized she’d missed that kind of voice directed at her. Didn’t want to admit how much. “Shouldn’t the other Slayer be sharing your work load?”

Faith snorted around her half-chewed rice. “B?” she finally said after swallowing. “Yeah, right. She’s off in her own little world these days. Though she’d probably call it her own little  _hell—_ not that there’s much difference, seeing as she’s on track to get us both killed and sent there for real with the way she’s been…” Faith shook her head. “Forget it.”

The Mayor frowned. “Faith… if this is something that’s been bothering you, that could be endangering you, I want to hear it.”

Faith glanced away. She felt blindly around her plate for the last sushi roll. Used to be she’d savor stuff like this, stretching out the rare delicacy for as long as possible, but now she knew the Mayor would just order her another plate. She chewed silently for a couple moments, staring across the restaurant to a glass wall that exposed part of the kitchen. Behind it, a chef wiped the blade of his sushi knife before bringing it down on something out of view—chop, chop, chop.

Things died everyday. Animals. Vampires. Humans…

It was natural really.

And the Mayor was right. Buffy’s moping was becoming a real threat. That and he’d been helpful and supportive towards everything Faith had confided in him so far. He was grateful for her, understood her work, would understand this.

“Buffy…” Faith started slowly. Even as just a witness, it was hard to get the words out. “We were fighting this group of vamps two weeks ago and there was this guy, and he… well, he died.”

“Oh, you poor dears,” the Mayor said, face crumpling. “Shouldn’t blame yourselves for that. Some nights you won’t save everyone and I know coming to grips with that is not the—”

Faith laughed. She tilted her head back and let her gaze focus on the tan ceiling. “Went a little bit  _beyond_  not saving, if you catch my drift.”

The Mayor stared at her. It took a moment for the realization to apparently sink in, but then: “Oh.”

Faith braced herself for the disdain, the horror; she was technically guilty by association and just prayed he didn’t judge her for the body clean-up, because hadn’t she read somewhere that was accessory to murder or something? And—

“You girls shouldn’t blame yourselves for that either,” the Mayor said.

Faith blinked. “Huh?”

“In your line of work, it’s inevitable that something that’d happen sooner or later. I’m trusting it was accident?” He waited for Faith to nod. “Then it’s a good lesson to remember in future battles, but nothing to beat yourself up over.”

“That’s what I told B!” Faith exclaimed, leaning forward. “But she’s been all, ‘oh no, I’ve stained myself with the blood of an innocent forever!’” Faith bit her tongue as a waitress briefly came over, and the Mayor ordered another mixed fusion roll plate before sending her off again. Faith continued: “And she’s been keeping it bottled inside her and she’s about to break, and… and I don’t know what to do.”

The Mayor looked thoughtful. “You haven’t told your Watchers?”

“Nah. B would deny it and they’d take her word over mine.”

“And if they heard it from her?”

Faith snorted. “Good luck getting  _that_  to happen.”

The Mayor was quiet. Too quiet.

“What?” Faith asked.

A smile stretched across his face. “I think I might just have the item you need.”

* * *

There was something both comforting and babying about double patrolling with Faith these days. Her sister Slayer half-strolled, half-slunk through the cemetery with a confident smile, completely untouched by ghosts. Giles and Wesley followed behind them, conversing in hushed whispers.

Buffy glanced back. As soon as they met her eyes, they stopped.

Her hollow insides scraped themselves hollower.

“B? Earth to B.”

“Huh?”

Buffy turned in a daze. Faith was staring impatiently at her, hands locked on her hips.

“I just asked if we should do one more turn before we check out the fresh graves. You need to get your head in the—”

Faith abruptly stiffened. Her head swiveled, scanning the darkness.

“What is it?” Buffy asked.

“Vamps. Dozen of them at least.”

Buffy frowned. Even closing her eyes and straining her senses, she couldn’t feel a thing.

“Dear Lord,” Giles said. “Are you sure?”

Faith flashed him a grim smile. “Dead sure.”

“Buffy? What do you sense?”

Her stomach twisted. The true answer was nothing, but… could her powers be fading somehow? Giles had told her it was possible… Of course, he’d said that as he’d been  _drugging_  her, but perhaps there’d been a kernel of truth in it. She’d been so muddled in her own head, and Faith looked so confident…

“I… I think I feel something,” Buffy said quietly. “But I’m not sure—”

“Shit, they’re moving away!” Faith bolted. “Come on, B!”

“Wait!” Giles yelled. “You can’t simply throw yourself into a direct attack with that many enemies!”

“No time!”

“Faith!” Wesley cried out helplessly.

Buffy felt rooted to the ground. She wasn’t in any shape to take down a group of twelve vampires, but neither was Faith and she was already a disappearing blur, and she’d need  _some_  kind of backup, and… and…

Buffy took off after her.

“Buffy!” Giles shouted.

She ignored him and kept running. The Watchers’ voices faded as she followed Faith past row after row of tombstones. They hopped the small fence at the edge of the cemetery, darted across the street, and then hopped another fence into the neighboring one. Buffy was starting to take deeper breaths—she didn’t think she’d ever sensed vamps from this far away before—when Faith abruptly stopped.

The cemetery was empty, and Buffy’s senses were as dead as ever.

“Hey, why did you stop?” she asked breathlessly. “Where are the—?”

“Oh, B…” Faith turned toward her, eyes dripping with pity. “I’m sorry it had to come to this. But you’ll thank me later.”

A cold feeling ran its way down Buffy’s spine.

“Thank you? What are—? Hey!”

Faith lunged forward, grasping Buffy’s wrist and yanking it towards her. There was a golden contraption in her hand, and she slammed it against Buffy’s palm. Buffy tried to pull away but she was too weak. Their hands began to glow…

And then the world whited itself out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's the end of my weekly Monday night chapters. Still expect Monday updates... they'll just probably be every two weeks. Because life and stuff.


	14. Nearly Faded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the awesome OffYourBird

The world swirled in a mess of blurred whites and grays. After what seemed like forever, they darkened and separated out again—the endless rows of tombstones, the dark shining grass, and right in front of Buffy… herself?

Buffy squinted, trying to figure out the ‘what’s and ‘how’s and, again, ‘what’s of that. Had she hit her head? Had Faith hit her head? And speaking of Faith, where had—?

Multiple bodies tackled Buffy from behind.

She hit the ground. Their weight pressed into her, pinning her into the grass—not vampires; she would’ve sensed vampires. Ice cold metal bit into her skin as chains clamped around her wrist.

“Hey! Get off—!”

Buffy froze.

The voice that’d come out of her throat wasn’t hers.

Paralyzed by shock, Buffy’s attackers yanked her back, and suddenly she was again looking at the her that wasn’t her. It wasn’t a mirror so much as a video of a memory she couldn’t remember…

The not!her swept her hands over her clothes, examining them—jean jacket and black pants, the same outfit Buffy had been wearing tonight. After that, she stretched her hands forward, examining them too. She twined a blonde strand of hair around her fingers for a moment before glancing down at her chest with a neutral expression. Then she finally looked at Buffy and grinned.

“Hey, B,” she said.

Buffy stared, things suddenly clicking together that really  _shouldn’t_  have been clicking. Had no reason to click. “Faith?”

“The one and only,” Faith said, smiling at Buffy from within her own body. “Though might want to keep quiet about that for a while. Wouldn’t want to ruin the fun.”

“Faith, what the hell are you doing? Who are—?! Oww!” Her hands were yanked farther back, the chain between her wrist tightening. The muscles in her shoulders—Faith’s shoulders?—screamed against their new position.

“Hey!” Faith snapped. “You’re not supposed to hurt her!”

“Sorry, Miss Lehane,” said a gruff male voice that sounded anything but.

_Miss Lehane?_

Buffy tried to twist, tried to see the faces of her attackers, but they remained anonymous. Anonymous but obviously in league with Faith, who was… No, she couldn’t be their leader. Buffy turned back, staring in horror at her sister Slayer. Something had gone horribly wrong. She was asleep and trapped in another nightmare. That’s right. It  _had_  to be another nightmare.

But then why did it all feel so real?

Faith crouched down in front of Buffy. “Come on, B,” she said, sickeningly sweet. The reassuring phrase sounded wrong coming from Buffy’s own mouth, the higher voice making it hollow and callous. “Nothing to be afraid of. I’m just helping you get your life back on track.”

Buffy blinked. “What?”

“Well, it’s obvious you’re never gonna do what has to get done, so I figured I’d pick up the slack for you.” Her eyes flickered to a nearby grave. “Again.” Attention returning to Buffy, she continued: “Shouldn’t take too long. Couple days max. Then we’ll switch back and…” Faith snapped her fingers with a grin that stretched bubblegum lips instead of cherry ones. “Everything will be better.”

Distantly, Buffy knew she should be yelling… fighting…  _anything_.

“Of course, can’t have you sabotaging your own recovery. That’s why these nice men are gonna take care of you till I’m done.” She patted Buffy on the head. Her hand dropped, trailing through dark curls. “Take care, B.”

She turned away.

As Buffy saw her own back for the first time ever, her brain finally kicked back into gear. “Faith!” she yelled. Her wrists struggled to snap apart but the chains held firm. One of the men behind her started chanting. Buffy tried to kick backwards, but too many hands were holding her in place; she couldn’t get leverage. “You can’t do this! You’re better than this! Please, Faith! I—”

Her voice abruptly cut itself off.

Buffy tried again. She could feel her throat moving, the muscles working, but no sound came out. She took a deep breath and screamed. More silence. The chanting; it’d been some kind of voice-stealing spell. She tried to wrench her wrists apart, tried to kick, tried to elbow, tried to—

One of her captors laughed. “Struggle all you want, girl. These chains are Slayer reinforced, Slayer tested.”

The meaning of his words hit her like a freight-truck: Faith had planned this. At some point, Faith had sat down and had planned  _all_  of this, right down to the stupid chains.

And with that realization, one thought suddenly shot high above the rest and lodged in Buffy’s mind like a flashing marquee.

She was screwed.

* * *

Spike lurked in a back corner of the Bronze, the drink he cradled doing absolutely nothing for his rising self-hatred. Every time a woman flashed him a suggestive look—every time he didn’t usher her into the back alley, he hated himself that much more. He hated that he was squatting here, watching the Slayer’s friends and waiting for… Actually, Spike hadn’t a clue what he was waiting for. He already knew—his gut knew—that Buffy wasn’t coming tonight. She hadn’t come here since the night she’d invited him.

Shoving his duster sleeve up, Spike checked his arm.

No new game. No new games since Wednesday when she’d spared him in the—

Bollocks.

Was this how he was measuring his life now? Days since he’d last seen the Slayer? Days since they’d last fought? Days since she’d last brushed her bloody stupid hair, all gold and bouncing and…

Spike shook his head; dangerous thoughts lay in that direction.

He refocused on his arm. The ink had nearly faded from their last game, but he could still pick out the grid and the faint  _B_ ’s and  _S_ ’s. The Slayer always kept the last game nowadays, kept it on her throughout the day despite hating him so much the other twenty-one hours of the—

What the bloody fuck had happened to her?

Something obviously screwy—only an idiot would claim otherwise—and based on their tussle in the cemetery the other night, if she didn’t get it sorted out soon, she wasn’t ever gonna dance right again, and that was a shame.

No, it was more than a shame.

It was bloody sacrilege.

A crime against the universe itself.

Spike tugged his duster sleeve back down and relocked his attention on the Scoobies. Just two of them tonight—Red sitting by her lonesome at a table bordering the stage, the little witch playing the good groupie for her werewolf boyfriend who, if Spike was being completely honest, wasn’t half bad on the strings. It wasn’t a bad stakeout, all things considered—decent music, decent beer, decent women…

Another bird at the bar made doe eyes at him, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder with a practiced flick. Spike scowled into his beer glass and forced himself to ignore her. Forced himself to ignore the hunger clawing at his gut.

It’d been one hour already, so it couldn’t be long now.

As if on cue, Red finally stood up and headed for the bathrooms. Spike finished his drink and followed. By the emergency exit, he pounced. His hand wrapped around the girl’s mouth before she had a chance to even squeak, and he dragged her out into the alley.

“Scream and you’re dead,” he growled, pinning her against the bricks.

She nodded slowly, her eyes white with terror. Even with that assent, Spike kept her mouth clamped shut; a witch’s tongue could do more damage than the rest of her combined.

“What’s happened to Buffy?” he demanded, lifting his hand only long enough to let her answer.

Red went pale. “Something’s happened to her?”

Spike nearly lost control, his bones crunching forward a split second before he pushed them back. “Of course something’s happened to her! Why else d’you think she’s up until 4 o’clock every bloody morning, terrified to go to sleep?!”

“W-what?”

“What happened to her?!”

He shoved Red hard against the wall until she squeaked: “I don’t know! I swear I don’t know! I mean, Buffy’s been dozing off in class a bit more, but I didn’t think that was a big thing since she used to do the same thing back when she was secretly seeing Ange— Eep!” She recoiled from Spike’s sudden snarl.

Good. He did  _not_  need to hear about the Slayer’s relationship with bloody Angel of all wankers right—

Wait.

No.

 _Could_  this whole mess be Peaches’s doing? It was possible— no,  _more_  than possible, and it was a wonder the thought hadn’t crossed his mind earlier. The berk had emotionally devastated the Slayer last year, so it’d make sense he’d done something again, even if last year’s mess had technically been caused by Soulless Boy, not Captain Broodmas—

Dread seized his un-dead lungs.

“Did she sleep with Angel again?” he demanded.

Red stared at him blankly. “What?”

“Did she—?” Spike grit his teeth. “Oh, for the love of… You heard what I said. Don’t make me repeat it.”

“Buffy and…? No! I mean, I don’t know? I mean, my fish are all still alive, although one’s getting these white spots that might be ich, but I don’t think Angelus is in the business of giving fish diseas—”

Her voice mercifully cut off as Spike covered her mouth again. He kept her pinned to the wall as he tried to think, fat load of good it did. All his mind gave him was images of Buffy and the great poof locked together in bed, sheets tangled around her sweat-dripping body…

His stomach churned. He tried to push the image away, but that only made it brighter.

Fuck.

If Angelus was back…

No. Angelus couldn’t be back, because the Mayor—in all his gloating wisdom about the town secrets—would’ve known he was…

Or maybe the Mayor _did_  know and just hadn’t shared.

Spike shoved Red away and took off down the alleyway. His hands clenched themselves into fists.

A certain government official had lots of explaining to do.

* * *

Faith’s heart pounded fast and audibly as she backtracked her way across the two cemeteries. She ignored the memory of Buffy—of her own body—pinned to the ground by the Mayor’s associates. Ignored the memory of betrayal carved onto her own face.

It was fine.

Faith hadn’t betrayed Buffy. She was helping her. A couple days from now—a week at the most—Buffy would understand that. Until then—

“Buffy!” Giles shouted. His form appeared in the distant darkness.

Faith flinched. Had Buffy escaped? She couldn’t have—

Wait.

No.

As far the world knew, Faith was Buffy right now.

Everything was still fine.

“Hey, G—” Faith stopped herself before she called him ‘G-Man;’ she’d picked up that nickname from Xander, but B never had. “Giles.”

He approached at a slow jog. Wesley followed shortly behind, huffing and puffing despite being twenty years younger.

“Buffy, thank the lord you’re alright,” Giles said. His face hardened into a sharp glare. “While I understand your need to take action, that was incredibly reckless of you and—” He paused. Looked behind her. “Where’s Faith?”

“Home,” Faith replied automatically. Her next speech was one she’d rehearsed. “We dusted the vamps, had this chat, and…” Faith breathed out a dramatic sigh. “There’s actually something I should’ve told you about weeks ago.” She glanced over from him to Wesley, trying to look innocent—the ever innocent yet fucking  _not_  Buffy. “Mind if I call an emergency Scooby meeting? I think it’s something everyone’s gonna want to hear.”

* * *

Buffy’s head felt like it’d been stuffed with dryer lint. Her mouth too. She’d been drugged; she remembered that much. She had struggled as they’d hauled her up from the ground, had lashed out with her unshackled legs until her foot had slammed into one of the men’s ribs with a loud crack. There’d been a needle after that—her arm still itched where it’d pierced the skin—and now…

It took awhile for her muscles to listen to her, brain signals coming through like syrup, but Buffy slowly forced them to turn her head to the side. She was lying on a bed. A plain bed in a plain bedroom. Sterile like a hotel.

Except hotels had windows.

Buffy tried to sit up, but a series of clinks stopped her. She was chained to the headboard.

“Welcome!”

Buffy turned her head the other way. A middle-aged man stood in front of the only door (and only exit) to the room. He had reddish-brown hair and an affable smile, and his hands were clasped behind his back like he was welcoming her to Sunday brunch at the local country club.

“I hope you’re feeling alright,” he continued. “I really wanted to set you up somewhere nicer than this, but I did what I could on short notice.”

Buffy tested the chains at her wrists again. Despite his obvious sleazy evilness, she could sense the man wasn’t a vampire. If she could just get in one good yank, then surely—

“Don’t hurt yourself,” the man said. “My Faith must’ve told you those chains were well-tested against the power of the Slayer.”

 _His_  Faith?

A dozen curses and insults snapped off Buffy’s tongue, each one falling totally silently into the air. Panic spiked and it got harder to breathe. She couldn’t break free, she had no voice, didn’t even have her own body—

“You shouldn’t blame Faith, you know,” the man continued amicably. “The girl’s only doing what she thinks is best, and I promised her I’d keep you safe and secure. Well, safe from yourself at least. Problem is, security budget cuts and all, well… many vampires roam these halls at night, and it’d be such a  _terrible_  shame if one were to break in.” The man’s smile fell, making him look genuinely remorseful for a second, and then the cheer snapped straight back into place. “But don’t you worry your little head about that. Just lie back, relax, and get a good night’s sleep.”

With a single step back, he flicked off the lights, plunging the room into complete blackness.

Buffy instinctually flinched. Her Slayer senses went haywire, straining to pinpoint any sign of threat, but there was nothing.

No tinglies.

No sound.

Not even the sound of her own breath.

It wasn’t until she heard the door click shut that Buffy realized he’d left. She was alone. She immediately thrashed against her chains—she was  _not_ going to wait around to become something’s snack.

Her legs were still free, so she wiggled to the edge of the bed and let them hang off the side. Her boots brushed the hard floor—concrete if she had to venture a guess. Just one more invisible reminder that she was trapped in the Bedroom from Hell. Bracing as best she could, Buffy pushed against the bed. If she couldn’t break free, maybe she could drag the whole bed with her. She wouldn’t be able to get it through the door without some serious leverage, but she could at least use it as a barricade, and that’d give her some extra time to—

Buffy froze.

Slowly—ever so slowly—the hairs on the back of her neck tingled up.

There was a vampire nearby.


	15. Silent Friction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the super awesome OffYourBird

Spike ripped open the back door to City Hall and inhaled deeply. The Mayor’s scent lingered in the air, strongest near the basement stairs.

Perfect.

He’d set Spike up in an underground apartment there, where he’d also set up several other vampires, including Mr. Trick. Spike personally hated the place, but the Mayor had gone all offended when Spike had suggested finding his own digs, so he’d let the issue drop. Until now.

“Spike!” the Mayor called from the bottom of the stairs. He stretched out his arms in jovial greeting, dropping them when Spike growled. “Oh dear. What’s wrong now?”

Spike jumped the last couple steps, forcing the Mayor to retreat into the basement’s main hallway.

“Angelus,” Spike said coldly.

The Mayor’s smile didn’t waver. “What about him?”

“He’s back. And you didn’t tell me.”

There was a longer silence this time. “Spike…” he finally said. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but Angelus is still Angel. All shackled and souled”—the Mayor sighed—“despite how fun it’d be otherwise…” He re-fixed Spike with his attention. “What made you think he was back?”

A shiver passed down Spike’s spine. Which was ridiculous because vampires didn’t get shivers.

Especially not master vampires.

“I have my sources,” Spike said tersely.

The Mayor frowned. “I get the sense that things haven’t been the best between us recently.” Spike snorted at the blatant understatement. “And I’d like to fix that,” the Mayor continued, unfazed. “In fact. I have a special treat for you.”

He gestured for Spike to follow him down the hallway. Thirty feet down, Spike froze.

“The Slayer?” Spike said, senses bristling to attention.

“One of them.”

Spike stared at the Mayor. Which…?

“I said I’d take care of the spare, didn’t I?”

Right. Not Buffy then.

The Mayor came to a stop outside an unmarked door. Spike could smell the Slayer through it, could smell her tang of sweat and adrenaline and—mixed in like a dark chocolate swirl—the slightest whiff of fear. Spike bit back a groan.

“I know tied-up-and-helpless isn’t exactly your style,” the Mayor said, “but take care of this one, and I’ll see you get your uninterrupted, one-on-one confrontation with the other.”

Spike closed his eyes. The Mayor was right; this  _wasn’t_  his style. If life were a party, Slayers were its dance partners, not the chicken wings laid out on the buffet table… But the offer was too good to resist. If he played this right, he could knock both girls over like dominos, doubling his Slayer count  _and_  his reputation. And speaking of double, there  _were_  two of them this time, so was it really a waste to nibble himself a small appetizer before the main event?

The Mayor smiled.

Spike let the bones in his face crunch forward.

* * *

The door opened.

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden light as her senses went haywire. The vampire was here. Inside the room. And she was completely bound and unarmed and unbalanced halfway off the bed and—

Her eyes finally adjusted, and she blinked.

Spike.

The vampire was Spike.

Her chest nearly broke with relief as she called out his name—

And no sound came out.

Shit.

That curse was still in effect.

“Well, what do we have here?” Spike asked in a lisped accent. He was in game face, yellow eyes boring into hers… no, into Faith’s eyes. He had no idea it was her in this body and she had no way of telling him—

Not that Buffy had any guarantee Spike would let her go if he did know the truth. He was always going on and on about killing her, and he was here, which meant he’d been in league with Faith and that other man this whole time. A sick feeling tore at her gut.

“Now, I’ll admit I’m normally not one to take my Slayers like a pig over a roast, but what can I say? It’s been a bit of a dry spell.” Spike approached the bed, a dark look in his eyes. “Standards drop.”

Buffy’s heart hammered in renewed panic. She searched the bedroom, but it was just as weaponless as it’d been when she’d first awakened.

The bed dipped.

Spike leaned over her, his gaze fixed solely on her terror-drenched face. Buffy swung her leg up, trying to kick him off, trying to slam her knee anywhere she could reach, but he caught her thigh and shoved it sideways.

Her muscles screamed, and she let out a silent cry. Her eyes watered in pain as Spike pressed himself flat against her.

“S’not very nice, Slayer,” he said, voice rumbling directly against her. “One’d almost think you didn’t like me.”

Oh god.

He was close. Way too close. Weird things were happening to her stomach as cool lips ghosted over her neck. His tongue darted out, tracing her pulse point.

Buffy shuddered, straining to pull away. This was all Faith’s fault. Here she was, wrapped up in chains and about to die, and Faith’s body was screwed up enough to be  _turned on_  by it.

Spike paused, chuckling. “And here I thought it was only Miss Sunshine. Is this a general Slayer thing now? Vampires get you hot?”

Buffy’s eyes shot to his in alarm.  _How could he…?_

Spike grinned. “No need to feel embarrassed, love. S’all part of my natural charm. No reason we can’t both get a bit of pleasure in your final breaths.”

The hand that’d been holding her knee painfully aside trailed up her thigh and brushed over the center of Faith’s jeans. Buffy’s thoughts scattered, but, no, she couldn’t let them do that because her head was the only weapon she had left, and she didn’t have that much time, especially when he was—

His fingers increased their pressure, and she let out a silent moan.

“Hexed you with some silencin’ spell, did he?” Spike murmured. “Bloody shame. You see…” He leaned in close and whispered in her ear: “I like hearing my girls  _scream_.”

Oh god.

Think, think, think. The only possible way Buffy was getting out of this—for better or worse—was getting Spike to realize she wasn’t Faith. True, he there was a good chance he’d kill her anyway, but he’d spared her once during her Cruciamentum for being drugged up, so maybe he’d spare her now. Or at least undo her chains so they could have a fair fight.

The problem was she had no way to communicate she was Buffy. Normally she could try and get him to pull down her jacket sleeve and see the last dots-and-boxes game she’d saved on her forearm, but that game was on her own skin, on her own body…

Or was it?

Fangs scraped her skin, sending cold bolt of panic through the heat.

Right. Vampire at her throat.

Immediate threat now, identity problems later. But the only weapon she had was her head, and—

Of course!

Rearing back, she slammed her head into his. Pain exploded in her skull, her vision spinning with stars. Spike spat out a string of curses.

“Okay, Slayer,” he said. “I tried to do it all gentle-like, but if you want the bite to hurt, I’m more than happy to—”

He paused, staring at Buffy as she masked her face in the best stone-like expression she could manage. She nodded up at where her wrists were locked together.

“What,” Spike said.

Buffy nodded more emphatically at her wrists.

“I’m not sure you quite get the situation here. You’re my prisoner. I’m not unchainin’ you.”

Buffy sighed in exasperation. She shook her head, then nodded a third time.

“Something other than unchaining you?”

Buffy nodded.

“What then?”

Buffy glared at him.

“Oh, right. Can’t speak.” He lifted a hand and trailed it gently down the leather of Faith’s leather jacket. Buffy’s eyes fluttered shut against her will. “Huh…” he said, pensive. “You want all this off, pet? Feel your skin against mine?”

Buffy instinctively jerked back, glaring at him. How dare he—?!

Wait.

Technically she wanted her jacket off, and Spike’s misinterpretation would still achieve that. She nodded her head vigorously.

Spike regarded her warily. “You Slayers are barmy, you know. The lot of you. Head-buttin’ me one moment, beggin’ to be stripped the next… Still, can’t deny a lady her last requests.” His fingers played over the edges of her jacket sleeves. “I’ll have to rip it.”

Buffy nodded, then held her breath as he shredded the material. Shivers coursed down her arms as cold air hit bare skin. She closed her eyes and prayed her marks had transferred together with her mind, prayed even as Spike’s lips closed over one wrist and pressed a kiss there, then pressed another kiss, lower and lower—

Spike paused. His whole body stilled.

Buffy cracked her eyes open, but Spike was stretched above her and his t-shirt covered chest was the only thing in eye range. She couldn’t tell what he was staring at, but she hoped… oh god, she  _hoped_ —

“Buffy?” Spike asked in a confused whisper.

Oh, thank god.

Buffy nodded vigorously as tears burned at the corners of her eyes. She was still nodding when Spike slunk back down her body and grabbed her chin in both hands. He’d shifted back into his human face, and—despite her lingering apprehension—his blue gaze had somehow morphed into one of the most comforting, most delivering things ever.

Spike released her and sat back on his heels. Still straddling her, he pulled a Sharpie from his duster. His gaze locked onto where her wrists were chained above her head. As he scribbled something on the palm of his hand, his face lost what little color it had.

“Buffy,” he repeated, sure of himself this time. His eyes scanned over her once more, and his expression darkened.

Shit. Maybe Buffy had misjudged potential savior possibilities after all, because,  _hello_ , soulless vampire, and—

“He fucking knew, didn’t he?”

Buffy stared at Spike, confused, until she realized he had to be talking about the man who’d chained her up and led him here. She nodded.

“I’ll kill him,” Spike said, drawing back. “I’ll—”

Buffy couldn’t let him leave, but her hands were out of commission. Moving on instinct, her legs wrapped around his waist and yanked him towards her, trapping him against her—

Oh.

She stared up at Spike in shock. He stared back. Their bodies were locked together, an unmistakable hardness in his jeans pressing against her center. Buffy tried to ignore it, tried to resist the sudden urge to grind herself forward and get a bit of beautiful, beautiful frict—

Keeping perfectly still, Buffy took a deep breath and jerked her head toward her chains.

“Right,” Spike said hoarsely.

Disentangling himself, he reached up and tried to yank the chains apart, but they held firm. Buffy fell into a depressive slump.

“Oh, stop your whinging,” Spike muttered. “Just give me a mo’.” He fished in his duster until he drew out a lock pick set. Perusing the small collection of metal sticks, he picked one and scooted up to get a good grip on her manacles. Then he paused. “Soon as I undo these, you’re not gonna stake me, are you?”

Buffy stared at him in aggravated disbelief, but that apparently wasn’t a good enough promise. She had to shake her head before he continued.

He worked quietly, a small grumble here and a tiny  _snick_  there the only signs of progress. Before tonight, she never would’ve pegged Spike as a lock picker, since he seemed to prefer the grrr-and-smash approach to most obstacles he came up against. Buffy supposed it made sense though. Hadn’t he been born in the 1800s? That was all Dickens and Oliver Twist and Scrooge and Kermit stuff, and she could see Spike as some homeless orphan scampering the streets, pulling one over on everyone he met… well, until the day he’d tried to pull one over on something with fangs.

The manacles unlocked and her wrists fell to the bed with blessed relief. Buffy cradled them to her chest and began to rub feeling back into them. She looked down at the nearly faded game of dots-and-boxes that still peppered her left arm and then at her opposite palm…

She turned her palm, and the ‘ _flamingo_ ’ that now graced it, towards Spike in silent question.

“Yeah,” he said, settling into a casual kneeling position near her feet. “Know that’s not what it’s supposed to be used for. Could’ve written anythin’, but I dunno… was the first thing that came to mind an’— Huh? Oh. Sure thing, love.”

Spike passed his Sharpie into Buffy’s outstretched hand. On her left palm, Buffy wrote its companion word. When she looked up, Spike was holding both of his palms out to her for inspection. Her handwriting had transferred successfully.

A comforting heaviness suddenly settled over her, an anchor to… well, not  _normal_ -ness exactly, but whatever was still left of herself. Faith had stolen every single other physical thing from her tonight, but not this. Never this.

As she continued staring at Spike’s palms, the ridiculousness suddenly hit her:

Her anchor to herself? Two nonsense words doodled on a master vampire.

Laughter bubbled up through her. It passed her lips, and then she couldn’t stop it. It spilled out in silent wave after silent wave, leaving her shoulders shaking.

“Slayer?” Spike said, staring at her warily. “Stop that. It’s creepy.” He gave a warning growl and she laughed even harder. With a sigh, Spike tucked his feet under him and waited. “You done?” he asked when she finally regained a semblance of control.

Buffy took a deep breath and nodded.

“Good. Cause I’m supposed to be killin’ you right now, and Mr. Mayor’s gonna get suspicious why it’s takin’ so long.” Spike’s gaze flickered toward the door. “Assumin’ he’s not already.”

Buffy frowned.  _Mr. Mayor?_  she mouthed.

“Ah, guess you don’t know about him yet. He and I were—” He paused, catching the dark look in Buffy’s eye. “Well, that’s not important right now. Important thing is that he tried to make me off you.”

Buffy raised an eyebrow.

“Off you without me knowin’ I was offin’ you. That’s to say, offin’  _you_ — Oh, don’t give me that look,” he said as Buffy rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.” He glared at the door again. “Wanker tried to trick me. That means I can’t take care of you till I’ve finished him first, okay?”

Buffy nearly sighed in exasperation at Spike’s one track mind, but if he wanted to help break her out of here, she wasn’t about to argue… not that she could do much arguing right now even if she wanted. Not verbally at any rate. Buffy rubbed her throat. She had no clue what spell those men had cast on her or where Faith was currently walking her body…

But Willow might.

“So we charge out of here and jump him,” Spike was saying, already wrapped up in his plan, “I suck the bastard dry, and then death match, you and me, in the hall.”

Buffy paled.

“What? Thought I was your own personal Lassie? Leadin’ you out of this well to safety?” He leered at her, showing a flash of fang. “We’re each other’s death walking. Best you don’t forget it.”

Buffy was still holding his Sharpie. She wrote on her palm.

Spike looked at his hand. “Don’t kill the man,” he read aloud. He fixed her with a stare. “Not exactly in a bargainin’ position here, love.”

Buffy sighed in frustration.  _You drain Mr. Mayor unconscious,_  she wrote in cramped letters. With Spike’s duster on, she didn’t have much real estate to work with.  _We go to Willow, she helps me get back into my original body_. Buffy paused. She didn’t want to promise him this next bit, but it was the only way to get him to agree right now.  _Then_ _we fight._

Spike remained silent, considering her proposal. “Fine,” he finally said. He held out his hand, marked with her words. “Shake on it?”

Buffy steeled herself, then did. His grip was dry and cool. The second it loosened, she snatched her hand back. She wiped it on her jeans—ignoring his snort—as if doing so would get rid of the lingering evil and cooties and evil cooties…

Her other hand still held his Sharpie. She tossed it at him, hoping it’d smack him in the head. It didn’t.

Catching it easily, Spike gave it a look over, and then tossed it back. “Think you’ll be needin’ it more than me tonight.”

Again, she couldn’t argue.

They moved off the bed and stationed themselves at the door. At Spike’s small whispered count, Buffy flung it open. The man who’d kidnapped her stood on the other side. He stared at her, blinked—

And then Spike’s fangs were out and buried in his neck.

Buffy flinched. Her Slayer instincts screamed at her to yank Spike off and shove a stake through his chest, but she forced herself still. Not until the man went unconscious, not until he went unconscious…

Which wasn’t happening.

Spike seemed to realize it when Buffy did. Growling, he gripped the man tighter, bit down harder, and then finally staggered back. He coughed, blood spitting up and out.

Mr. Mayor frowned at the two of them, seemingly unaware of the ragged bite that’d taken out a chunk of his neck. “Spike, Spike, Spike,” he tutted. “I am disappointed in you. No, more than disappointed. Positively bereft.” As Buffy stared, his skin knit itself back together. “Months I’ve been your friend, and this is how you’re choosing to end it? By throwing your lot in with the Slayer?”

His gaze shifted to Buffy, locking her in place with his eyes. There was a deadness there, an unchanging deadness that chilled her to the core. Beside her, Spike growled, oblivious to the new threat, his body tensing for another attack.

Buffy grabbed him and ran.


	16. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

Buffy managed to drag them out of the building from hell, across the street, and into an alley before Spike finally tore his arm from her grip.

“Why the hell did we run?” he demanded. “I could’ve taken him.”

Buffy rolled her eyes and pulled his Sharpie from her pocket.  _Did you somehow miss yourself spitting up blood?_  she wrote.  _What was that about, btw?_

Spike swallowed. He looked back in the direction they’d come. “Drank too much. Got full,” he said distantly, in the same baffled tone Giles might use to say his library was too quiet, or Willow to say her grades were too high. Then Spike blinked, returning to the here-and-now. “It was human though. I  _know_  the taste of human,” he insisted as Buffy licked her thumb and scrubbed off new space on her palm. He huffed loudly. “Fine. Assumin’ you’re right and something’s off, what do we do?”

 _Same Plan A,_ Buffy wrote.  _Find Willow. She might be able to research weirdo dude too._

“The Mayor.”

There it was again.

_As in the actual mayor?_

“Yeah. Why?”

_The mayor’s evil?_

“Slayer, this whole  _town’s_  evil. Get with the picture.”

Buffy’s mouth opened, a silent protest hanging on her lips. Spike was wrong. He had to be. Sure, parts of America’s sunniest Hellmouth weren’t exactly… well, the sunniest, but that didn’t mean the  _whole_  town was doomed. As she readied her pen to write just that, she froze.

Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer, was standing in a dark alley, casually chatting with a vampire.

Buffy Summers, Vampire Soulmate.

Buffy Summers, Human Killer.

Her stomach sunk. Maybe Spike was right and Sunnydale was evil after all. Maybe the town corrupted everyone that lived here, and the people who weren’t evil yet were just that—not evil  _yet_.

“Oi, Slayer,” Spike said, waving his hand in front of her face. “Slayer!”

Buffy jumped.

Spike rolled his eyes. “I said, where does Red live? Kind of need you to lead the way. Faster we get this sorted out, faster I can kill you.”

Buffy swallowed, something sharp sinking deep into her gut. Her death. It was all Spike had been going on about tonight. Had been going on about since forever. Was it really all he thought about? It shouldn’t have been a surprise. He was a vampire. He knew that. She knew that. And yet—

“Slayer?” Spike’s annoyance faded into some weird, unreadable expression as he continued to stare at her. His head tilted.

Buffy whirled away and waved a hand for him to follow.

He was right. The faster they reached Willow’s, the faster all of this would be over.

* * *

Spike clung to the second floor window sill, peering through the glass at the rather drab and undeniably empty bedroom.

“She’s not here,” he called out over his shoulder to Buffy, who was waiting on the ground.

Her dark eyes widened and then she started scribbling her response on her hand.

Faith’s hand.

Something.

Nearly half an hour now and it still made his skin scrawl—seeing one body,  _smelling_  one body, but knowing it was another. At least it wasn’t a perfect switch. The Slayer carried a current tenseness that went beyond stress, the swing in her step slightly off the whole way here, like she was walking in shoes a half-size too big. It was a rare good idea of hers, waiting until she switched back to fight. It wouldn’t be right otherwise.

When Buffy stopped writing, Spike glanced down at his hand:  _What do you mean she’s not there? Where else would she be?_

“How should I know?”

Spike glanced back at the empty room. He didn’t like this one bit. The Mayor always had extra wheels spinning. Out of sight. In plain view…

Course, that didn’t mean Spike was completely wheel-less himself.

He sniffed, quickly picking up the witch’s scent. It lingered in the air, fresh and strong, not more than a block away, but traveling east at—

Oh hell.

Spike dropped to the ground and sprinted after his prey.

* * *

Willow twisted her hands together, staring blankly out Oz’s windshield as he silently drove through the suburban streets of Sunnydale.

Tonight was a mess. First there’d been that sleepless night stuff Spike had rambled about behind the Bronze, and now Buffy herself was calling an emergency Scooby meeting… Something was wrong. With Buffy. With her best friend. And Willow hadn’t had a clue. When Oz had picked Willow up, he’d told her to be chill, that they couldn’t know exactly what the meeting was about until they got there, but her nerves still wound themselves tighter and tighter—

Something slammed into the back of the van, jolting her forward.

Oz braked hard.

“What was that?” Willow asked, bracing herself against the seat and door handle.

Oz’s nostrils flared, senses still heightened from the full moon earlier that week. “Vampire,” he said. “Hold on.”

As they skidded into an empty intersection, Oz jerked the wheel to the left. Tires squealed as the van spun. A black shadow flew off, tumbling onto the asphalt. Willow yelped. In one practiced motion, Oz reversed, then slammed the stick shift forward, gaining inertia for a full-vehicle assault.

The black shadow started to push itself up. Its white hair glowed beneath the street lamps.

“Wait!” Willow yelled.

She shoved her door open and stumbled out onto the street. It been an hour since his attack at the Bronze, and this time she was ready. Her hand twitched, a containment spell already on her lips.

Spike groaned, still on his knees, then spotted Willow approaching. “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai!” he shouted, throwing a hand up in surrender.

Willow stopped. “What?”

“The Slay— Buffy needs your help,” Spike said, wincing. He kept Willow’s eyes locked with his own as Oz came up beside her. “That’s your favorite movie right? Not Dil to Whatsit like you’ve apparently been tellin’ your other guy friend all these years?”

Oz and Willow glanced at each other.

“Buffy told you my favorite movie,” Willow said cautiously, “so I’d trust you?”

Spike finished picking himself up and brushed off his duster. “Somethin’ like that.”

Movement caught Willow’s eye.

“Faith!” Willow shouted as the other Slayer rushed towards them. “Spike just attacked us and—”

“Oi, I did  _not_  attack you!”

“—he’s saying weird stuff about Buffy being in trou… ble…” Willow frowned. “Faith?”

Faith was doing a series of frantic interpretative gestures like sign language—if sign language had just ten words and no grammar.

Spike sighed. “That’s Buffy,” he said. “Not Faith. The two birds got body-swapped somehow, and I’ve somehow been enlisted in gettin’ them un-swapped.”

Faith pointed at Spike, then gave a thumbs up, nodding vigorously.

“Okay,” Willow said slowly, not wanting to take her eyes off either one. “Why doesn’t she tell us that?”

“Got double-cursed tonight. Some kind of silencing spell.”

“That’s convenient,” Oz said.

“Look, it’s not like  _I’m_  the one who caused this mess. I’m just doin’ what she’s”—he jabbed a finger at Faith—“been tellin’ me to.”

Willow bit her lip, looking between Spike and Faith. Or Spike and Buffy? She stared the Slayer in the eyes, trying to search for… something. She’d seen this movie. She’d seen lots of these movies. Wasn’t she supposed to be able to just  _tell_  whether it was a different person or not?

A good friend would be able to tell.

“You told Spike about Kuch Kuch Hota Hai?” Willow asked.

Faith—Buffy?—nodded, and then her eyes lit up, some idea clicking behind them. She pulled a Sharpie from her jeans pocket and started writing something on her hand. Spike glanced at her, then lifted his own hand, also covered in scribbles.

“Oh!” Willow said, clasping her hands over her mouth. It’d been forever since Buffy had mentioned it, had mentioned  _him_ , but—

“What?” Oz said.

Willow ignored her boyfriend in favor of the word-covered palm that Buffy was now holding out:  _Don’t worry. I told him it was your favorite. Didn’t tell him why._

Willow grabbed Buffy’s wrist and dragged her toward Spike, then grabbed his wrist and compared the two. The handwriting on their hands was identical—not Buffy’s handwriting, but not Faith’s either, which made sense if Buffy had lost her muscle memory to Faith’s in addition to everything else. Had lost everything except…

“It’s not the body,” Willow said distantly.

“Yeah,” Spike said. “They’ve swapped. It’s what I’ve been tryin’ to tell—”

“No, I mean—” Willow lifted their wrists higher. “Soulmates. When I found out you two were linked last fall, I started researching because I assumed it had to be the bodies that were connected and not souls like everyone’s thought this whole time because, hello, soulless vampire—not exactly the poster child of a  _soul_ mate, if you know what I mean. But if Buffy’s just switched bodies and your…”—she scanned their identical palms again—“well, connection is still here, then it means that it’s not the soul but it’s not the body either, so there has to be some third unaccounted life force that—”

Buffy jerked her wrist away. “Willow!” she snapped, so clear that Willow could read it off her silent lips.

Willow winced. “Sorry.”

She peered at her friend, still searching for some other sign of recognition. Nothing. And meanwhile, Spike…

Spike had taken a step back and was waiting with arms crossed, fingers drumming out some beat on his elbow. True, he was Buffy’s soulmate, but that fact had never curbed the vampire’s bloodlust in the past. The way he’d had Willow up against the alley wall earlier tonight, threatening with claws and fangs, was proof of that.

“Why are you helping her?” Willow asked him.

Spike started. “Cause I feel like it,” he said, seemingly surprised by the question. His face darkened. “Course, if that’s not a good enough reason, I can find other things to do with my— Ow!” He rubbed his duster sleeve where Buffy had punched him.

Willow glanced at Oz and swallowed. Her boyfriend seemed to understand her silent plea for decision-making help.

“You’re one hundred percent sure that’s Buffy?” he asked.

Willow glanced at the dark-haired girl who knew at least one secret she’d only ever told Buffy. Who had a skin-to-skin bond with the one person only Buffy had…

“I’m sure,” Willow said.

Oz nodded. “Buffy,” he said. “Do you trust Spike?”

Buffy stilled. She glanced at Spike with a shadowed look. Guarded. Wary.

“Buffy?” Willow prompted as Spike lifted an eyebrow.

Buffy fixed her gaze on a nearby tree. Squeezing her eyes shut, she finally gave one tiny, reluctant nod.

Spike snorted.

Her eyes snapped straight back open. Pen materializing from nowhere, Buffy furiously scribbled something on her hand, then shoved it at Willow’s face as she glared death at him.

“‘For now and  _only_  now,’” Spike read from his own hand before Willow could. “Fair ‘nough. You’d be bloody stupid otherwise.” The backhanded compliment surprisingly didn’t do anything to puff Buffy back down.

Willow cleared her throat. “So Buffy. Do you know how you got like…” She gestured up and down Faith’s body. “This?”

Buffy sucked in a slow breath, then fixed Spike with a long suffering stare.

“Right. She explained a bit to me on the way.” Spike held up his marked hand. “Apparently the other Slayer’s the one who did the switch. Bint’s gone evil. Or crazy. Or some mix between.”

“Faith did…?” Willow gasped, then spun towards Oz. “The meeting!”

“Right,” Oz said.

“What meeting?” Spike asked.

Willow turned back. “Buffy—well, Faith pretending to be Buffy—just called a Scooby meeting. She said it was an emergency.” Willow paused, biting her lip. “But she wouldn’t… I mean, she’s still Faith. She’s our friend. She wouldn’t…”

“What? Harm you lot?” Spike glanced at Buffy with a wry smirk. “Don’t think she got that particular memo with you, love.”

Willow paled. “Oh God. You mean, she—? But Xander’s on his way there! And Giles and Angel are already…”

Buffy visibly brightened.  _Angel’s there?_  she wrote.

“Yeah,” Willow said, noting the way Spike rolled his eyes. “She said they crossed paths on the way back to the library.”

Buffy sighed with a smile.  _Angel will keep everyone safe._

“Angel?” Willow said, brows furling in confusion. “What about you, Buffy? If something bad’s happened to Faith, you need to stop her.”

“Red’s right! You’re seriously trustin’  _Peaches_  of all people to protect your friends?! He doesn’t give a rat’s arse about anyone ‘cept you, and  _you’d_  be the one giving him his marchin’ orders.”

Buffy’s face went red as she sucked in a breath. Her hand completely out of space, she started scribbling down her arm.  _I_ _will_ _stop her. But I still don’t know what Faith’s planning, and this meeting could be a trap. Plus I should get rid of this curse first_ , she tapped her throat,  _otherwise it’ll be your word against hers, and hell, she might have already told Giles and Angel that_ _I’m_ _the evil one._

“Oh…” Willow said as she finished reading. She looked from Buffy to Spike who was lifting back and peering down the sleeve of his duster. “I guess that makes sense.”

“I can go,” Oz said. They all turned to face him. “I’ll tell them Willow’s sick. It’ll give you guys time to work on the curses, and I can call if anything important happens.”

“A-Are you sure?” Willow asked, heart thumping at the thought of Oz intentionally putting himself in danger.

Oz shrugged. “Got anything better in mind?”

Willow swallowed, yelling at her brain to think, think,  _think_  of something, and then shook her head. With a gentle kiss goodbye, Oz hopped back into his van and drove off. She stared after it longer than she knew she should. “Alright,” she finally said, turning back to Buffy and Spike and faking way more confidence than she felt. “Let’s go break some curses.”

* * *

Everything was taking too long. Faith paced the floor of the library, conscious of the men’s eyes on her. Xander, Angel, Giles, and Wesley… Part of her said good enough, confession time already, but Oz and Willow had said they were on their way. That’d it be fifteen minutes tops.

That’d been fifteen minutes ago.

Nervousness jittered through her, which was stupid. It wasn’t like Faith had been the one to kill that man. It’d been Buffy. It was Buffy’s crime and Buffy’s guilt, and wasn’t Faith’s at all so… ugh! Why did she feel so fucking tense all of a sudden?

“Buffy?” Angel said. Faith jumped as the tall, dark, and handsome vampire suddenly inserted himself into her pacing path. “As long as we’re still waiting for Oz and Willow…” His face had a slightly pained look to it. “Could we have a word?”

“Oh, uh…” Faith glanced at the others, all looking inquisitively at her. At Buffy. Good ol’ Buffy, always demanding full attention from the world. “Sure.”

The two retreated into the stacks. Faith leaned against a bookshelf, hugging her arms low across her stomach.

“Buffy, look at me,” Angel said. “Please.”

Faith reluctantly tilted her head up, meeting oak brown eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Faith blinked. “For what?”

“I’ve given you time, and I respect that you need time, and I’m more than fine with that… I just want to make sure that you’re doing alright. I worry about you.”

Faith bit back an automatic reassurance; she was about to tell the whole group that she’d killed— no, that  _Buffy_ had killed a man. Straight-forward reassurances were off the menu tonight. So she laughed instead. “I’m the Slayer,” Faith said. “What’s there to worry about?”

Angel’s brow creased. He lifted his hand to her cheek, gently cradling it even as Faith flinched. “I can see how you’re hurting, and I…” As he stared into her eyes, Faith’s breath caught. No one had ever looked at her like this…

And no one probably ever would. Not knowing the truth. Not knowing that it was her and not Buffy.

It wasn’t fair. Buffy had everyone. Had all the attention and love in the world and the goddamn bitch didn’t even realize, didn’t appreciate what a fucking gift it was that—

Angel stiffened. His hand dropped. “Sorry. I shouldn’t…”

He pulled away, and Faith tugged him back. She clashed her mouth against his, pushing through his shock until he was kissing back with just the barest hint of tongue and teeth, far too restrained for what she needed it to be. Something flickered in her long numb chest. Something she wanted to scratch and scratch out until it burned—

Someone coughed beside them.

Angel stumbled back. Faith did her best not to cling after him.

Oz stood at the entrance to the stacks. “Willow’s sick,” he said in his usual monotone. “But everyone else is here.”

Faith cleared her throat. “Right,” she said. Angel stood beside her, refusing to meet her eyes. “Right. I’ll get this show on the road then.”

She took her place in the center of library, scanning over each person’s face one by one. Breathed in. Breathed out.

This was easy.

It was going to be easy.

“Right then,” Faith said. “I called everyone here because, well, you guys might have noticed I’ve been acting strange lately.” Friendly, perplexed faces met her own. Faith closed her eyes—Buffy. She was Buffy. “I killed a man two weeks ago. It was an accident and it sucked, but it happened. And I’m sure the Watcher’s Council is gonna have thoughts about it, but I don’t frankly care what they are. I’m still the Slayer, so… they’ll just have to deal.”

Silence.

Faith took another deep breath and opened her eyes. Wesley and Xander were openly gaping, Angel regarded her with his usual pained expression, and werewolf boy was completely unreadable. No surprise whatsoever.

Giles blinked slowly, then took his glasses off and started to rub the bridge of his nose. “That’s…” He braced himself against the checkout counter. “Well, that’s… very adult of you to confess that. And after years of service, it’s inevitable that an accident like this would occur, as they’ve occurred with Slayers in the past.” He paused. “There were mitigating circumstances, you said?”

Emboldened, Faith crossed her arms. “You bet your damn skin there were.”

“Buffy Summers!” Wesley said. “This is a human life that we’re talking about—! That you—! And I am frankly appalled by your apparent lack of remorse! Mr. Giles, tell her!”

“I’m sure this experience has been weighing on Buffy in a way you can’t possibly imagine,” Giles told the other Watcher without taking his eyes off Faith. “She shouldn’t be shamed for the way in which she chooses to tell us about it.”

“Exactly!” Faith said, flinging a hand toward Giles. “Thank you! And since we’re on the subject of shame and general dickishness I’ve had to put up with from the Council, I think it’s time I—”

The countertop phone rang, harsh in the post-midnight stillness.

No one moved to answer it.

Faith swallowed. Everyone who’d be calling the Sunnydale High library at this hour was either already here or accounted for, which meant…

“Someone should answer that,” she heard herself say.

Wesley made a dismissive gesture. “Buffy, despite Mr. Giles’ assessment, I’m still not sure you’ve entirely grasped the seriousness of your—”

“It could be important,” Faith said.

“Buffy’s right,” Giles said. He picked up the phone. “Hello?” He paused. “Excuse me? Did you say…? No. No, thank you.”

Faith shoved her hands in her pockets to stop them from shaking. “Who was that?”

“Telemarketer.”

Shit. That was the Mayor’s signal that something had gone wrong.

“What were they selling?” Faith asked as calmly as possible.

“Miniature golf clubs of all things.” Giles shook his head. “Most bizarre. Even for a hell-mouth.”

Translation: Buffy escaped.

Double shit.

“I have to go,” Faith said.

Wesley strode forward. “You most definitely do not!”

“I think,” Giles quickly said as white hot frustration cracked through Faith’s blood, “what Wesley is trying to say is that taking a human life, even accidentally, is a profoundly traumatic experience, and that both of us would—” He paused. Breathed. “That  _you_  would feel much better if we were to talk about this in a manner that—”

Faith’s thoughts kicked into overdrive as Giles plowed into a never-ending lecture with a message that would’ve sunk in a hell of a lot better if Buffy had actually been the one standing here and listening to it. Faith needed to do something quick because if she didn’t, if she waited here, waited for Buffy to find her, waited for Buffy to kick her ass since she had no idea that Faith was doing all this to help her, waited for Buffy to slam back shut all the emotional baggage that Faith had just started to open…

Yeah.

Screw that.

“I also called this meeting because I think Faith might be under a vampire thrall,” Faith blurted out.

Giles broke off mid-sentence. “Excuse me?”

“When we were patrolling earlier,” Faith said, trying to string together an even half-plausible story, “Faith attacked me, then ran off. It was super bizarro.”

“Faith?” Wesley said. “You said she went home.”

“Yeah, I… I guess I tried to pretend it didn’t happen at first? All that traumatic experience stuff you guys just mentioned. But now I realize she’s still out there. And dangerous. And I need to go find her.”

“I—” Giles started, still visibly lost for words. “Frankly I don’t know what to make of half of this.”

“Do you trust me?” Faith asked.

“Of course I do, Buffy, but this news—  _all_  this news…”

“Then trust me for this one night, and after that we can do all the healing Watcher/Slayer kumbaya stuff you want. I promise.”

A muscle ticked in Giles’ jaw as he swallowed. “Very well.”

“Mr. Giles! You can’t just—!” Wesley drew himself up. “You’re not her Watcher anymore,  _I_  am! And I say—”

Faith laughed, long and harsh, cutting him off. “Don’t you get it?” she said. “What you say doesn’t matter anyone. Not you, not your dusty books, not your dusty Council, none of it! But hey.” Faith flung open her arms. “If you really think you can stop me? Then stop me.”

Wesley trembled in impotent rage, his face reddening.

“He might not be able to,” Angel suddenly said. “But I can.” As Faith tensed, reading herself to fight or flee, he quickly brought his hands up. “Don’t worry. I don’t want to stop you; I want to go with you. If you’re right and something’s wrong with Faith, you might need the extra strength.”

Faith swallowed. If Angel went with her, there was a chance he’d recognize Buffy and take her side, and then Faith would  _really_ be screwed. But… Angel had already made out with her tonight and hadn’t noticed a difference. Plus, Buffy was annoying resourceful and only god knew where. Having a natural born Slayer-tracker on her side might not be the worst thing ever.

“Angel and I are going out,” Faith said. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

Wesley most definitely had a problem, but Faith wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. Oz was silent as usual. And as for Xander…

The boy raised his hand. “So, Buffster… going back to that whole ‘killed a man’ thing you mentioned…” He laughed nervously. “It wasn’t like you killed an actual  _‘man’_  man, right? Because you’re not that kind of—”

“Good. No questions,” Faith said, cutting him off. Figured that Buffy’s goody-goody classmates would be the ones to default straight to denial. Unfortunately, fixing that would have to wait until she got back. She turned to her new vampire partner. “Alright, Angel. Let’s go bag ourselves a Slayer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Bollywood. I love Bollywood and was super happy that I had some canon basis to cram a bit of that love in here.
> 
> The two 90s Bollywood films mentioned in this chapter are Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Dil to Pagal Hai. Both star the amazing Shah Rukh Khan, one of the most notable actors in Bollywood history.
> 
> KKHH is about a non-serious jokester boy and his long-time friend who's a tomboy with a secret crush on him. When a new, super pretty girl enters the picture, the boy falls instantly for her and the long-time friend is crushed. However, the pretty girl eventually dies and years later the boy crosses paths with the long-time friend again and he falls in love with her, and he and the long-time friend live happily ever after.
> 
> DtPH is about a non-serious jokester boy and his long-time friend who's relatively pretty with a secret crush on him. When a new, super pretty girl enters the picture, the boy falls instantly for her and the long-time friend is crushed. The super pretty girl and the boy stay together, and the long-time friend eventually accepts that he doesn't love her and that's fine and comes to term with their friendship being just that. A really good friendship.
> 
> So... yeah. I kinda took an educated guess as to which one Willow would secretly prefer.
> 
> (I personally prefer DtPH because I like the songs better, but also because I like the way the film validates one-sided feelings without over-romanticizing them and also the way it treats male/female platonic friendships as things that can actually exist.)
> 
> Also chapter beta'ed by the awesome OffYourBird


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